July 17th, 2017
How to get to Sapa…..
Not at all prepared for this leg of the journey. We are here in Hanoi with no way to get to Sapa. It’s 11pm and we are trying to figure this out. The guy at the desk says to just come down at 7am. Hmmmmm. Not sure how this works but feeling like it might need to be prebooked? It is a 5.5 hour bus ride after all. Well trust the process I say. We set the alarm for 6am and settle in for the meager night’s sleep. But sleeps when you set an alarm are never as good as when you don’t have that anxiety over missing the alarm. Last night was no exception. But either way we were up at 6am, down in reception at 6:08am and asking about a bus to Sapa. The guy at the desk indicates he will look into it/make a few calls. Once again not seeing English as a strength here yet.
“Breakfast?!”- “yes” – “sit please”. Out comes two plates of fruit, one watermelon, the other dragon fruit. “Coffee or tea?” – “yes one coffee one tea” out comes two white coffee. What if I didn’t like white coffee (I happen to- but what if I didn’t?) and no tea for troy, but I guess I got two whites coffees 😉then two more plates each with two fried eggs and warm bread. Hmmmmm. I guess they have a “set menu” 😂😂
The desk guy comes over and says bus to Sapa coming at 7:30am 600,000 dong for 2 person (~$36usd). Sounds reasonable enough. Starting to question the quality of the ride though as the online busses we saw were $25 USD each?? I guess we will see. It’s not like we have a tonne of choices at this point.
So as we nibble our way through the breakfast, Troy says “do you have the roomkey?” I say “no, don’t you?” Uh oh…….so now I have to try I explain to the desk that we locked our key in the room. A couple phone calls later, and after waiting a few minutes someone else comes to get us. Our room is on the 3rd floor but he presses 7. Assuming we are looking for house housekeeping. Indeed we are, after he hollers down the halls for her, we go to 5th floor, same thing. Keep in mind it is about 6:30am at this point, so likely people still sleeping?? He gives up, takes us to 3rd fooor and says wait. He comes back a few minutes last with a pop bottle full of keys. And I mean a lot of keys. And he needs to try each one…….
Ya, we are those people……
Pretty sure he had to go through all of them until he found the key for 301. Why they aren’t labeled I’ll never know. That makes too much sense? We get in the room and then can’t find our key…..,I’m like seriously! Where could it have gone! It was a very basic room and we had been in it for less than 7 hours total. It was under something, but did cause some momentary panic!
So we are feeling bullish on most things now, we pack up, haul our stuff back down to lobby and start the wait. I paid my 600,000 dong at the desk and then we sat down. At 7:45 I asked the girl at the desk for an update. She said 10 more minutes. At 8:15 I was starting to get nervous again. At 8:25am there was a lot if gesturing etc. Our bus was here. So indeed we are on our way. First time in a sleeper bus…..
