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Published: January 3rd 2010
My room in Sapa
I stayed at Baguette and Chocolate and this is my beautiful room for 20 USD a night. I arrived in Lao Cai train station at 6:15 AM after a pretty good night's sleep, considering I was sleeping in a tiny room with three strangers on a moving train. I thought my hotel was picking me up at 7:00, so I waited. And waited. And finally at 7:30 I figured I'd been stood up and took a minibus for 30,000 VND (1.60USD) to Sapa. This was just one of several misunderstandings I had with hotels. Well, actually, I think misunderstanding is the wrong word. More about this later.
On the way to Sapa, there was a mudslide. The road was steep, wet, curvy, and by some miracle I did not get sick. Can't say the same for three Vietnamese girls who, thankfully, had plastic bags handy. We sat there for about an hour and I slept most of the time. I was the only foreigner on the minibus, so no one attempted to update me on our status, so I just slept. It took three hours to get to Sapa - a distance of about 38 km from the Lao Cai train station. On my return trip it took about 50 minutes. Hmphf. Anywho, I was practically thrown
Baguette and Chocolate
The outside of the cafe/restaurant where I stayed in one of the four guestrooms they rent out of the bus on the town square when we arrived, and it was freezing and wet! Ugh! What was I doing here again? Oh yeah, I read about it in this stupid book I have and thought, "I just have to see this place." I stayed two days and couldn't see much of anything because of the fog! Sapa is near the Chinese border and the trekking is supposed to be amazing, but I couldn't motivate myself to do much trekking in the cold, wet weather.
After I stopped by Sapa Tourist Information, the guy working there told me my hotel was just up the hill about 200 meters. Um, it was just up the hill - about 30 meters. I figured out pretty quickly that the Vietnamese are very bad at judging distance. Perhaps because they spend far too much time on motorbikes. I stayed at a place called Baguette and Chocolate that I found in my Lonely Planet. They have four rooms to rent for 20USD a night, and my room was beautiful! Private bath, hot water, satellite TV, electric heating pad, but no heat in the room. The rooms are above a lovely cafe/restaurant that
Sapa Square
Every day in winter is foggy in Sapa - and cold. has good coffee, decent food, and a fireplace that wasn't really effective, but added to the ambiance. The cafe and hotel is actually a vocational training school for underpriveledged students. They did a good job waiting tables and cleaning the rooms, but their specialty is pastries. Oh my goodness! They made some good pastries and were really sweet kids, but when I tried to ask about someone picking me up at the train station and why no one came, they had no idea what I was talking about. I asked to speak to the person who sent me the email, but no one seemed to have ever heard of this person. No one apologized or tried to clear up the mystery, so I just dropped it. Again, this wasn't the first time this would happen to me in Vietnam.
I spent the afternoon trying to get some decent pictures of Sapa, the town, and had some good coffee and food at Baguette and Chocolate. One problem with Sapa is that very few places have heating, so I couldn't get warm. I ended up in my room around 7:00 PM and went to bed early.
The next day I
Cool Pub
I liked the look of this pub, but I never managed to go in. walked about 1.5km to Cat Cat village (20,000 VND or 1.15USD) and managed to pick up these two local Hmong women along the way. I gave them no indication I would buy anything but they stuck to me like glue, and were really nice, but after we exhausted their limited English, they just walked with me and talked to each other. One was carrying a baby on her back in a pouch. They walked all through the village with me, down to the waterfall, and out the other side of the village back to the road. I didn't look at anything any of the locals were selling, but these women continued to walk with me. I didn't really mind, but I knew they were trying to make me feel guilty so when they left me I would buy something. And sure enough, I asked to see some small bags they had made, but they asked a ridiculous price of about 9 dollars each, and they wouldn't come down, so I said no. I explained that I wanted to help them but that I felt that price was way too much. They could live for a month off 18 dollars! They
still wouldn't come down, so I left them. They weren't even angry and didn't even seem disappointed.
I decided when I got back to Sapa (it was only noon!) that I'd had enough of the wet weather, so I checked out of my lovely room, much to their suprise, bought a train ticket for that evening, and sat in The Gecko restaurant reading a book for hours until the bus came at 5:30 to take us to the train station. The Gecko served the best Bailey's and coffee I have ever had. Vietnamese coffee is outstanding, and when you add Bailey's it is truly additive.
I would recommend a visit to Sapa in the summer months, and I would recommend staying at Baguett and Chocolate and eating there. But don't count on your hotel to actually come pick you up at Lao Cai station. Just get a minibus. I wasn't the only one who got stood up at the train station. Oh, the Tourist Information has free internet and free maps and the guy working there seemed to actually know something about the area. There are loads of tour companies too, but take the calculator from them and
know the exchange rate.
Another night on the train for me, and I'm off to Halong Bay tomorrow.
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