Visiting Sapa can definitely be a highlight in a South East Asian trip.  The indigenous people there possess unique qualities with their vibrant costumes, music and style of housing and the almost utopia setting of their villages.  Here one could really experience a prehistoric land which seems untouched by the horrors of modernization.  You will marvel to watch the tiny black H'Mong people carry heavy loads of straw across the mountain and to see the women dressed in there unique tribal clothes.  These people are beautiful and make you appreciate our common ancestry where once community and family and the environment were as one.  Trekking there with the people, sleeping in their villages and feeling welcomed allows you to connect with a time that has past and yet lies in all our genetic memories a time when we were truly organic and treated the earth as a God.  This picture may be somewhat romanticized and these people live a harsh, impoverished life. But after you visit, you may think about trading places from sitting at your laptop in western comfort to breathe that pure Sapa air for even a moment; you might be willing to do it for any amount of money!  Go there and let yourself be harmonized.