The usually busy Sa Pa Town is now nearly deserted. This is not the first time the tourist town has been empty. Sa Pa streets were also empty amid the first wave of Covid-19 in the first three months of 2020.

 

Many shops and hotels have closed. Tran Trung Quan who works in the tourism sector said, "The restaurants are struggling to maintain business. They have to cut staff to save costs as there have been no visitors."

 

Nguyen Xuan Tien, the cook of a restaurant in Sa Pa said, "In June and July, we received lots of customers at night. However, the number of customers dropped drastically in the past three weeks and now we rarely see anyone comes in. During the weekends we may serve one or two tables."

 

Tien went on to say that he just received the wage for the first stable month when the second wave started.

 

Kien, a restaurant owner, said, "Usually, we received hundreds of customers each day. But recently, we only have a few tourists for the whole week. I’ve had to reduce the working hours of the employees and save some cost."

 

Hotels also recently seen few customers. Even though accommodation prices have dropped by 20-50%, the hotels have been still unable to attract customers.