Chinabites

Posted: Nov. 05, 2009

This is the second post in a two post series about a quick journey Chinabites took in late 2009 from Kunming to Sapa, Vietnam. Pt. 1 here

The mini-bus made it’s way along the 38km route into the mountains between Lao Cai, Vietnam and Sapa, the mountain retreat village near Vietnam’s highest mountain range. Night was falling as we drove into town. Large bonfires dotted the hills flanking our approach. We made our way through the commercial section of town, dropping passengers off as we went. Our final destination was the tourist quarter, where I was staying. In early November there were far more vendors than tourists. Girls and women of all ages in full Black Hmong get-up roamed the street in packs, pouncing on freshly arrived tourists to hawk small handicrafts.

Restaurants and hotels packed both sides of the street in the tourist quarter. The majority of the restaurants were Italian, French, or Spanish themed with pleasant, rustic-chic interiors, candle-lit tables, and open fireplaces in the dining room. The weather was chilly, but not cold enough to see your breath. Probably between 50-60 degrees F. I asked in at the Luong Thuy Family Guesthouse, where a friend had recommended me, but they were full that night and I was referred up the street to the Tulip or the Pinocchio. I stopped at the Tulip. The owner showed me a simple room for USD 6 / night. There was hot water but no wifi. When I thanked him and said I was just going to check out the Pinocchio, he told me, confidentially, that sometimes the staff at the Pinocchio promised one price and charged you another at checkout. OK, I thought, I’d come back if I saw their noses growing after they gave me a price. I walked over to the Pinocchio and the room they showed me was cleaner and larger than at the Tulip, and they quoted me USD 6 as well. I payed up front and got a receipt. They took my passport, apparently standard procedure at hotels here.

I asked another tourist where a good place to have dinner in town was. She said there was a Vietnamese place right up the street. I stopped in and had my first meal in Vietnam, fried noodles, chicken curry, and a beer. As I was tearing into the noodles, I realized that I actually hadn’t eaten anything since the breakfast of over the bridge noodles I’d had in Mengzi that morning. Perhaps my hunger contributed, but in any case, the fried noodles, flat, translucent, tender, and stir fried with scallions were definitely the highlight of the meal.

The chicken curry was similar to curries I’ve had in Kunming, neither a spicy Indian, nor a savory Thai, but something very bland and middling. I don’t recommend it particularly.

After dinner, I walked around the the tourist quarter a bit. It was dark and slightly hazy, but the full moon had broken through - bright as it was in the sky, it did not particularly illuminate the surrounding landscape. That pleasant surprise would wait for the following morning. Heading away from the tourist quarter and into the town proper, I spotted a French-Vietnamese café that I singled out for breakfast the following day. I walked home along a row of street barbecue joints and was “hello’d” about twenty times along the way by folks eager to sell snacks.

The next morning I walked out of my room onto the sixth floor balcony of the Pinocchio hotel to a stunning view of the highest mountain range in Vietnam. I snapped an early morning panorama of the range.

I headed over to Luong Thuy, dropped my bags, and went out to Gecko, the Vietnamese-French café that I had seen the evening before. The set western breakfast was uninspiring, the omelette was just a fried egg, the toast couldn’t take a buttering, and the mango juice was weak. The coffee, however, and all of the coffee I had in Sapa, was superb.

The next meal I had was street barbecue for dinner. I paid 60k dong, most likely way too much, for two pork kebabs, two veggie kabobs, and two rice rolls - sticky rice stuffed into bamboo and roasted over hot coals.

The next morning I got up and took a walk around the fields just below Sapa and in the shadow of Fansipan mountain. I stopped in at the Royal Hotel for a breakfast of beef pho …

… and spring rolls, which sported impossibly thin, crispy, and translucent skins covering delicious spring roll goodness inside.

For lunch, I sprung for a fancy restaurant, my one splurge meal in Sapa - which set me back 120k dong. It was ground pork and shrimp in a turmeric-seasoned pancake served with a delicious light sauce reminiscent of citrus and a small side salad.

I rode out with a motorbike guide in the afternoon to see a nearby waterfall and mountain pass. On the way back, we passed an older man and a boy, walking down the road with a snake on a stick.

The fact that the stick and string contraption looked designed to keep the snake from striking its captor was a pretty good indication that this was a venomous creature. Nevertheless, I asked my guide on the bike whether or not the snake was poisonous. His English was limited and he didn’t understand the question, so I changed strategies. Pointing at the snake I said, “If it bites you, do you die?” at which point he said, yes, without a doubt, you die. I asked what they were going to do with it. He said “sell it”. My mind flashed back to seeing bottles of liquor with snakes in them (good medicine for “men’s health” issues, I hear) back in Sapa. I asked how much a snake like that would bring them. He responded 100k dong. Again, I felt grateful to be a programmer, and not a snake catcher, risking my life for about six US dollars.

I only stayed in Sapa for four short days, but I have to say that for a tourist town, it really exceeded anything I’ve experienced in China. The highlights of Sapa for me were sipping amazing Vietnamese coffee while watching the sun set from my room’s balcony at the Luong Thuy family guesthouse and taking a walking tour of a Black Hmong village in the valley below Sapa.

I always have trouble dealing with the predatory nature of tourist towns like Sapa. Everything always seems to be geared towards taking money from tourists and it’s hard not to think of some of the behavior as “cheating” or “unfair”. There is some of that going on in Sapa, but on balance, as tourist towns go, Sapa is the best one I’ve ever been to. The vendors seemed uncharacteristically interested in genuine human interaction - even if you didn’t buy they were smiling, enjoying the conversation, and seemed happy just to chat (and they had fantastic English as well). The children were adorable, even when they were trying to sell you stuff and the adults seemed relaxed and happy. I don’t think I ever saw a face that wasn’t smiling during the whole four days I was here. The scenery was top-notch, the weather was perfect, and the food was great. A budget of USD 20-30 dollars per day will get you food, lodging, and entertainment aplenty. I only wish I’d had more time to explore. Chinabites will be back to Sapa.