Free time in Sa Pa

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We had lunch today at Abeergies or something like that and it ended up being the same as Buffalobelle from yesterday. Literally had their menu with their name on the hard cover. Strange. There we had the potato soup again, but this one was a bit different, and we ordered a pizza. The service was great…more attentive than in Buffalobelle.
Our mission was to find Ronald some The North Face hiking shoes. He’s a size 44/45, so it is really hard to find shoes—they really only go up mostly to 42 or 43. Apart from that, he was picky about no shiny buckles and wanted a dark color – gustos I agree with. They have some pretty ugly stuff they try to sell.

While we were walking around to the different shops, we ran into Lan, our Black H’mong tour guide from yesterday. Today she was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, just like anyone from any part of the world would. I wonder how often she would wear the Black H’mong clothes if she wasn’t a tour guide. As a side note on her, something I forgot to mention was that she doesn’t know when she was born, so every lunar new year, they all count themselves one year older. Interesting, I thought.

We walked all around the outside markets but ended up going back to a shop we saw at the beginning, but not before grabbing a spicy kebab sandwich from the street vendor by the plaza. There he bought the shoes for $25.00 and headed out.

When it was time to go back to the hotel to meet the bus, we decided to stop back in Ly’s shop since she tried to help us before. There Ronald found some nice layered pants that he bought for 550,000 VND. When the minibus from the hotel dropped us off in Lao Cai, we ate at the restaurant they dropped us off at, which had so-so food. Not so great, but not awful either. We also bought baguette sandwiches there for the approaching train ride.

The train was very hot in the beginning, but luckily it cooled off after a while so we didn’t have to have a sweaty night’s sleep. This time the train was nicer…on the table in the middle were: four ceramic cups in holders, 4 mini water bottles, four packaged toothbrushes, four wet napkind, and four packaged crackers. We were sharing a room with a Vietnamese couple, so we didn’t really chat…

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Photos

Purse
Flower H'mong style of design, colors, and pattern