SAPA was engulfed in thick fog. The small town in the Hoang Lien mountain range, North Vietnam, was covered in a blanket of haze, like an image from a poem. Houses in the Victorian architecture sparked amazement. Large trees seemed to yearn for sunlight. Then, on the road, people were faintly seen walking back and forth, like a scene from the film A Walk in the Clouds.

Amid the dense clouds lives the montagnard community. It’s a term left