July 18th, 2017
Day 1 Sapa
So the rain just won’t quit. I’d say we brought it with us, but apparently we didn’t. The typhoon hit here too on Monday and the town seems all but washed away and the rain just keeps on coming. We are very happy with our hotel. The staff are very very friendly and it sure is comfortable!
We saw a break in the rain and decided to brave a walk about town. We got to the end of the street before it really started coming down. No poncho and no umbrella. Oh well, how long could it last? A while apparently, so we duck into a place for lunch. We are not super experienced at the art of ordering food here. There gave us a menu with no pictures and no prices. Troy orders a coke and the girl hollers something at the top if her lungs and someone hollers back and she writes it fish on an order slip with a price, then shows it up us (35,000 dong or something like that). Ok. Then Troy orders spring rolls, yelling occurs, then she writes down 150,000 dong (that’s ~$7). I am thinking where’s the cheap Vietnamese food?? But it is what it is, so we say ok. Then Troy orders beef pho and she says “NO”. We are confused, isn’t that the national dish? So I order chicken fried rice, yelling back and forth, she writes down 45,000 dong, ok. That is $2.25 usd – seems reasonable. We wait a while and then the fried rice comes. It’s tasty and there’s plenty, then the mountainous platter of spring rolls shows up. Hahaha. We are used to ordering spring rolls and 2 or 3 spring rolls cut into 2 or 3 pieces….. explains the $7. But by the time we make our way through this plate of spring rolls, I might never want another one…..
The good news was that the rain let up while we were eating. The bad news was that it started again before we were able to leave. 😂😂😂. So we made a mad dash back to the hotel so we could dry off, I could change my shoes and we could borrow an umbrella from the hotel.
With a map in hand and an umbrella we headed back out later to explore and presumably find some pho (for troy-I’m not a fan). Believe it or not. The place we stopped at for supper also told us “NO” to pho. WHAT????? Is there a pho shortage? Upside to the place we stopped-a super cute doggie. I had Vietnamese coffee and fried noodles with chicken and troy had ribs and rice.
We tried to stop into the Catholic Church but it was closed, and basically the rain was so ridiculous that it made walking anywhere very challenging. I am going to try to get some pictures, but the public works department here has some serious work to do. Either they have massive problems with their drainage in general or there was an incredible amount of damage done on Monday. I suspect maybe some of both….most sidewalks are huge craters with the drain water running freely down the streets like rivers. It has been raining a lot for the last month, they are in the “rainy season” here apparently! More on this next post….
