I’m in Sapa and I find that I am not the least bit interested in taking a tour into the surrounding mountains. I priced several tours and I can afford it if I stick to eating out of food carts and mini-marts, but I don’t want to. God forgive me, I have done enough tours in this country to last for at least three and a half years, maybe four. I’m sure that the trek is worth all of the hassle, and this is a really interesting corner of Vietnam with the many different tribes and stunning mountain scenery. I got a little taste of the diversity when I went to the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology, so I feel a little justified in missing out. Besides, a lot of the hill tribe women come to Sapa to sell their handicrafts which, judging by the blue tint of their hands, are actually done by them and not some factory in China. They crowd around hotels waiting for tourists to emerge and they are so cute and friendly with their rosy cheeks and cheery dispositions. They ask where you are from and how long you have been in town, and so on and so forth. If you chat with them, they will follow you. Even if you stop talking to them, they still follow. I ducked into a store to lose one and she just waited me out.
I don’t know why I settled on the first hotel that I found. I think it is because I was preoccupied with the fact that I had lost the keys to my luggage locks and I wanted to deal with that situation. Also, I was just stunned by the view at my hotel. I got a musty room in a hotel basement with a bathroom that leaks from everywhere, but I got a view. After seeing how crazy expensive food is in this town, I think I should have found a hotel that didn’t have such an impressive view. Not only that, but some Vietnamese b**** that works at the hotel had a good laugh at my expense when I asked if they could help me cut the lock off of my pack. I ignored her and kept a straight face even though I wanted to drop-kick her bony ass into the crowd of waiting hill-tribe women outside the front door.
After finally deciding that I was going to skip the trek into the mountains, I opted for two days with two small luxuries. My luxury for today was to have a meal at Baguette and Chocolate, a patisserie that is also a restaurant management school for Vietnamese kids from poor families. I ordered the chicken and banana flower salad, chocolate and lemon mousse, and a coffee. Everything in the salad except for the peanuts was julienned, and it had a light citrus dressing not unlike that of papaya salad, but without the heat. The chocolate and lemon mousse had just the right balance of sour to sweet and a perfect texture. My only criticism is that the table that I sat down to was sticky and it got all over my computer sleeve. I paid 88,000VND (about $5) for this dinner and for Vietnam, that’s expensive.
