Topas Ecolodge

Topas Ecolodge is a hilltop lodge of stone bungalows in Hoang Lien National Park, above the Sapa valley in northern Vietnam. Fifty bungalows, carved from local white granite by one of Vietnam's best stone-cutting teams and finished in a spare Scandinavian style, wrap around the hill with private balconies looking out over the Muong Hoa valley's rice terraces and the peaks of Fansipan, the highest mountain in Indochina.

Staff are hired and trained from five surrounding ethnic-minority communities, and you can head out with them on lesser-known trails through bamboo forest and past hidden waterfalls, or visit a village to see traditional weaving and farming up close. The kitchen runs on organic produce from the lodge's own garden and nearby markets, served at the open-kitchen Restaurant 360°, while the property runs partly on solar power and treats its own wastewater.