[Travel] Mountain View Hotel – when in SaPa like the rest of Vietnam, haggling is a pleasurable sport!

MOUNTAIN VIEW HOTEL SAPA
Add: 54A Cau May Str., Sapa, Lao Cai


We arrived in SaPa and lost no time in scouting around for a place to stay. We wanted somewhere with a view of the mountains BUT for only $5. Hey! We did our homework and we knew a place can be had for that amount lol. So anyway, after about 30 minutes of looking around to find out that room rates range from around $15 – $30 (at least where we checked, we were getting tired lugging our bags around) we went back to the first one, Mountain View Hotel. The guy at the reception, recognizing us from our visit earlier, smiled warmly and asked how much we were willing to pay. Earlier he said their rooms cost from about $15 to $25. Without batting an eyelash, I quipped “$10”. He took a room key and showed us to a room. It was huge! It had a double and a single bed plus a balcony with a spectacular view, TV, good wifi, and a huge bathroom with hot/cold water with rain shower and all that. So we asked him, so how much for this? And he said, “the rate you quoted”. ” You mean $10? For real!? We’ll take it!” I don’t know if he took pity on us since we had to like shop around only to do a 360° and come back. Or maybe it’s because it was International Women’s day when we were there and he asked me if I received a flower and I said no. It was only later that the significance of that question dawned on me. We don’t really celebrate it with flowers back home. Whatever the reason is, we were thrilled with our room. Finally, we can rest properly! 



We did not get any tour packages although we did took advantage of his excellent English and asked him a few questions about touring CatCat village. Really friendly guy, I’d recommend staying there if you ever venture this side of Vietnam.





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