Vietnam the third: Day 6, Sapa
It’ll likely be a short post today (I can hear the sigh of relief over the rain and the rampaging children from here) as, well, we didn’t do much today. Managed 14,500 steps of not much, somehow.
We kicked off with the hotel breakfast, nothing too fancy but al least this way I get my daily ration of pink dragonfruit and lychees, along with what is best described as coffee flavoured mud — they keep their pot going strong, but sadly I didn’t find any condensed milk to give it what it really needed. It’s probably the first sign that I’m starting to go bamboo, actually looking to put sugar or condensed milk into coffee.
The plan was to find something to do, to experience some local craft or culture or something, so we started with the hotel front desk. Our front desk people in Hanoi were LOVELY, and made everything possible, but here in Sapa, not so much. Their English isn’t great (to be fair our Vietnamese is a thin slice above non-existent) but they just don’t seem to have the local tour contacts that Hanoi did. Even using a translate app, they don’t have the same knowledge of local things to do, maybe they haven’t been asked this for a while, post COVID etc.
So we trundled off to the Tourist Information Centre, with the usual Hmong street hawker escort. Some are beginning to recognise us and are responding to our plea of “No shopping”, which is a bit of a relief. The combined Sapa Tourist Centre and Museum was a little underwhelming too, I think the lack of English speaking tourists has made them a little rusty, but we at least left with a general Sapa brochure.
We had thought that today might be a day to check out Mt Fansipan, or Phan Xi Pang, but Sapa is pretty well cloud-bound right now, so we figure the view will be a little grey. With that off the table, we wandered down the main street a while, before having a look a the park beside the lake. It says something about the Vietnamese that they have planted and are manicuring lantana, something that generally only mad bastards would try — so very different from the Australian approach of bung it in a corner of garden that you never want to go into, ever.
Nursing a coffee with condensed milk, we googled and pondered, and thought we’d stumbled across a couple of potential leads, a batik workshop and a cooking class, including addresses of where to enquire. So off we went to Indigo Cat, an ethnic and ethical shop that also arrange batik classes. We enquired, and gave them a time, and were given a phone number. We gave them none of our details, so weren’t sure if we’d signed up or not. We later tried the phone number and got no answer. L eventually managed to get in contact through chat, and yes, they were now expecting us at 9am tomorrow morning. Kinda weird way of doing it.
The cooking class had no such luck, the address was probably wrong, as it was a deserted building, and subsequent googling indicated that it actually a way out of town. If that was the right place. File under all too hard.
In searching for activities in Sapa, we did find ourselves frequently landing on pages for a site, possibly a booking office, so we tried there. It was a hotel reception, deserted except for two children watching anime on the big screen. There was no response to us calling out, so after a couple of minutes we gave up and went in search of lunch. In our earlier wanderings we passed several restaurants with pigs on spits out front, and wondered if that was one of the Sapa recommended foods, armpit pork (thit lon cap nach, literally “stolen armpit pig”), so went back to one of these. Sadly it wasn’t but they did have bbq pork, which was very nice, with some green herbs, nuoc mam, and steamed rice. Good smoky flavour, not dry, and quite delicious.
We wandered down to the main Sapa market, with a friendly Hmong street hawker in tow for a chunk of it. It’s just an uncomfortable thing, really, I don’t like to be deliberately rude, but at the same time we’re just not interested in their wares and don’t want to be part of encouraging this kind of thing. They aren’t bad people, but their persistence is getting to be a little uncomfortable — it’s challenging enough to be dealing with frequent drizzle, wearing a mask, navigating the streets, and trying to find some appropriate activities, without having a woman wandering next to you asking all manner of questions. I have to admire the persistence, and also their ability to remember things — I told one I was from Spain, and the next time she saw me she started talking Spanish at me. But this is an issue that I’m just not going to solve.
Anyway, Sapa market, a two-storey affair, with stalls for clothes and cheap souvenirs and food and clothes and stuff. It was also nearly deserted of customers, just a few wandering among the food stalls. All a bit sad really.
On the way back to the hotel we popped into the behemoth just to check that the various trains and cable cars to Mt Fansipan were actually still running, given it’s really been that kind of trip. The good news is that they are, so we’re pencilling that in for Friday and hopefully the weather will play along.
Dinner was back at the hotel, as it started significantly precipitating while we had a foot massage. I’m starting to get normal use of my legs again after Monday’s climb, though sitting for too long and going down steps are being done slowly. The hotel appears to have suddenly filled up with a tour group of locals, and not the quiet sort, so it took two visits to the hotel restaurant to get a table. We had very tasty grilled salmon with dill, and a stir fried beef that both hit the spot (we were looking at the hotpot but as it comes as a serve for 4, we weren’t that hungry. As we at, there were many sounds of drinking coming from behind some screens at the other end, lots of loud toasting going on, and at one point a screen got knocked over. I twice had members of the group shake my hand and thank us for coming to their country.
Tomorrow I attempt batik, which I will suck at.