Signing off from Vietnam

We arrive at Nha Trang around 5am with no hotel booked…. Off the bus we get, fight of all the guys trying to fit us both, with two big bags each onto a motorcycle and start our wandering to find a hotel.

We wander down into the main tourist destination and start looking for hotels that look open…..only one….. The guy here takes us around 3 hotels, banging on the doors, waking the night workers up only for then to say they’re full… Now we know how Mary felt…

We finally found one - the one the guy who took us around to the others worked in - bizarre. We got a nice big room, dropped our bags and jumped straight into bed to catch up on some well needed sleep. Just falling asleep when we have a nock on the door… We try to ignore it, but it keeps coming. So Peter gets up in his boxers and answers the door, not in the best of moods. It’s the receptionist asking if we don’t mind moving rooms because they have had some other people come into the hotel who want to stay for a few nights and where we’re only staying for one, we’re not allowed the big room… She sweetens the request by giving us a 5$ discount (that’s like a third of the room rate), so we oblige and trudge to our next room.

Ah, finally some sleep. Or not. Just as we’re falling asleep for the second time we get another knock. Peter gets up again in an even worse mood and finds two people standing at the door with big smiles… ‘Can we have our money we left in the bathroom’…. They were in that room before us and had left a big wad of cash in the bathroom… So we gave it back and earned some good karma. Finally some sleep.

We walked to Nha Trang beach for some sunbathing, and parked our bums in a spot that was free from litter. Not the nicest beach. We were in a group of around 20 westerners sunbathing, the Vietnamese don’t seen to worship the sun like the whities, they are in full clobber, some were even in puffer jackets - crazy. Peter got nice and burnt, Rox went brown and we ate lots of nice food. We only stayed here for one night and two days as there is not much to do really that we haven’t done before, plus the beach was pretty grubby.

We got an overnight sleeper bus off to Hoi An. This was fun, we had a little scare that we had been scammed as it was half hour late, but thankfully it turned up! We go to get on and are told we have to take our fairly big day bags on when there is tons of room in the underbelly storage space, we try to argue but the driver guy just shouts at us, waves his arms and walks off. I think he won that one. We were quite lucky as the other passengers that got on later had to bring all their luggage on. Some poor people had to squeeze in the smallest space, and when they tried to complain the guy again shouted, waved his arms and walked off. 2-0 to the driver. On route we picked up even more passengers, they slept in the aisles, and the second driver set up a hammock in the middle and slept there taking up some poor girl’s space.

In the middle of the journey we stooped at some unspecified location, and there was a group of about 5 men, one white truck and lots of big boxes. Our drivers and the guys shouted at each other and the boxes were loaded onto our coach. That’s why we weren’t allowed out luggage in the storage space. We get to Hoi An, and practically get chucked off, get our bags, tell the motorbike guys no again and walk to our hotel about 2k away.

We get there, and it’s a nice place complete with swimming pool. On arrival I ask the reception guy to recommend a tailors. He doesn’t quite get the ‘just recommend’ part and asks how long we need before someone comes and picks us up….! Half hour later Rox is pooing herself about getting on the back of a motor bike to get to the tailors… She does well, although I felt sorry for the women driving the bike as Rox was holding on fairly tight.

The tailors was nice, and I felt a lot more comfortable there compared to Thailand as there was a lot more time taken in my measurements, and in discussing how I would like the suit to fit. So we went ahead, I chose a nice bright red lining that Rox thought was grose…. Oh well, my suit, my choice. This was around 10am; I was to come back at 5pm for my first fitting. After we left Rox was jealous of Peter getting something made so she went to get some sandals made. Pretty impressive for 7 pound 50. They were nice to.

We wandered Hoi An old town, this was lovely, and full of locals as it was still their New Year holiday! We wandered the streets, eating and drinking. Hoi An is well worth the visit! My suit was finished and fitted perfectly first time, the red lining even looked the nuts, and Rox agreed.

We then moved onto Ha Noi, the capital of Vietnam. This journey should be simple right!? Wrong. We brought our tickets through our hotel, which we felt was pretty safe as it was nice, busy and had excellent reviews from hostel world. Once we were on our way we realised we’d been ripped off by 12$... We thought our journey would be expensive as we wanted a luxy sleeper bus for the 17hour trip and didn’t question the price we were quoted - lesson learnt… On our way to the bus station our transport there stopped at some random office, a guy jumped on saying that the sleeper bus had crashed and that we had to go on a seater bus, and that they will refund us, which turned out to be 50,000 VND (2 pounds), and that they would buy our food for us on the stops. This happened so quick we had no real time to complain, we were off again. We got to the bus station and the drivers were shouting at us to hurry up and get on as we were late - although it wasn’t our fault. They looked well pissed of when I asked if I could go to the toilet… Oh well. The bus was shit - no room what so ever. Plus to our annoyance, the bus ticket advertised on the bus itself was only 200,000 VND - under half of what we actually paid. Plus, everyone got a meal included in the ticket price. So this was bad right!? It hadn’t finished, not once, but twice the bus broke down. All the men had to get off a push the bus to jump start it… This was like at 2am in the middle of no where - and at one of these little hitches we stopped on the middle of some train tracks. Oh the joy.

So not only did the hotel ripe us off, they even tried to steal our books. We had finished about three books and were going to exchange them for some new ones. One staff member came over to us and asked if we were finished with them, we said yes we’re going to exchange them. He tried to take them and we reiterated no we’re going to exchange them…. We then went to pay at the reception for our stay. We put out books on the counter whilst we sorted the bill. He shouted something to the lady serving us and she grabbed our books and put them behind the counter…. We had to ask for our own books back….

Well we made to Ha Noi which was a bonus I suppose. We arrived about 5.30am and had to find a taxi. Again this should have been simple. We wanted a proper cab this time as we had been ripped off in one the ‘non-legit’ cabs so we tried flagging down some proper ones. Every time one came over, they told us they couldn’t take us and then some locals got in and they went off. After a few of these episodes we realised that the ‘cab co-coordinators’ were telling the legit cabs not to take us so we get in one of the smaller ones and get ripped off. So we had to walk about 10 mins away from the bus station so these ‘co-coordinators’ couldn’t exert their power. We finally got one, and the driver seemed quite scared and kept looking back over to the bus depot, and telling us to hurry up loading our bags. It was under half the price one of these smaller cabs quoted us.

We stayed in a pretty nice guesthouse and the owner was probably the nicest we’ve met so far!

We booked a trip to Ha Long bay, and decided to go for a more expensive option to treat each other to an early Valentines present. This was well worth the money. Ha Long is lovely, and we had gorgeous weather. The trip was a two day one night cruise, on an old ‘junk’ boat - the food was the best we’d had in Vietnam, and there was loads of it! The sights were spectacular, the water clear (in most places). Ha Long is an area consisting of around 1,900 islands and is currently trying to be recognised as one of the 7 modern wonders of the world. Peter jumped from the boat and swam in the sea; we kayaked through caves and into lagoons and visited an old cave that was used as a hospital during the Vietnam - America war. This was a great trip.

Whilst in Ha Noi we visited Ho Chi Min mausoleum, this was cool. Our first embalmed body. We also visited the Ho Chi Min museum - the strangest museum ever. It was pretty cool, more like a modern art museum, but to us it didn’t seem like it had much structure or information. Although, we can’t read Vietnamese or Russian which the majority of descriptions were in.

We're now aiting for our 24 hour seater bus from Ha Noi into Vientiane (Loas). Hopefully we get there with no hic ups.... Not likely....

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