Day 23

We arrived in Sapa around 6:45 AM and had to wait in the hotel lobby until nearly 7:30 for 1 room. Mar and I were exhausted so we took a nap while we waited for the second room. After a nap and a shower, we ventured out to check out the town of Sapa. It’s a mountain town with amazing views (I promise pictures soon. The internet connection is not that reliable). This is definitely the best scenery I’ve seen so far. Maybe the Great Wall beats it, but just barely!

There’s a Hmong minority group in the area. The women and children come to town to sell their embroidered goods in their special outfits (very beautiful). Everything’s very beautiful but they can be a bit aggressive. We were sitting outside at a coffee shop playing cards and a old woman came up to us and before I knew it she had tied a bracelet to my wrist! Then she moved on to Tyler and pulled the same trick. What do you do then? Reach for the wallet I guess. Marianne fell victim to a young boy with his baby brother on his back selling bracelets. She paid 10 VND and the aggressive lady sold Ty and me one for only 3 VND each (roughly 15 VND equals $1).

We mainly spent the day enjoying the perfect weather. Sapa is much, much cooler and much, much less humid than Hanoi. Here you can actually walk outside and feel chilly! I’ve never appreciated cool, cloudy weather more than when we arrived here! Our activities for the day included shopping, reading, playing cards (I taught them rummy 500 so that’s basically all we play), and eating. We had dinner at our hotel then moved on to some bars for a few drinks. We even played a game of pool (we all suck).

We weren’t that impressed with our hotel. It got good reviews on Trip Advisor but it was incredibly damp, the rooms were bare, and full of mold. So we found a place down the street for our 2nd night.