Hoi An, Vietnam

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Ahhhh..............Hoi An. Our favorite hotel, Thien Than, with our lovely hosts Bing and An, a breakfast buffet, and oh-but nothing worth having comes easy. I need to go back.

We arranged the reservation on the phone for Thien Than back in Saigon. I was actually calling the wrong hotel-but I did say it, spell it, describe it, and named the owner. The hotel I was talking to said yes, yes, yes. We took a taxi to the airport and checked our flight. Cancelled. Ticket agent said we could have a refund. We ran to another airline and they had a flight leaving in 10 minutes-so we divided and conquered. Steven bought the new tickets and I ran to get the refund. (Not sure that was an even splitting of tasks). The refund was a bit difficult to obtain-but I got it! We ran up the stairs-oh no! needed booking tickets. Ran back down the stairs, got booking tickets, ran back up the stairs, through security, gates changed, ran over-made it. Arrived at Danang, looked for the taxi holding our name (don't you just love that?!), finally found him and off we went. I noticed the name of the hotel was not the one we wanted-I explained that but of course all i got was yes, yes. As we drove through Hoi An, we saw our hotel and told him to stop. We got out-asked how much we owed him, but he took off. As we were checking in the taxi came back with an angry man (all of 4' 5")and he was angry with me saying "you made reservation at Thien Nga, not Thien Than". I explained, that although I might have done that I did explain I wanted Thien Than and the man became angrier. He then told me that I was coming with him. That did it. I told him we were staying here and for him to stop. Our clerk, tiny little young woman, tapped me quietly and wanted the phone number of the other hotel. She dialed it, said something in a very sweet voice, and then said, "You can pay the driver 12 dollars now please". Then she said something to the angry little man and he left. Now we get to walk by that hotel every time we leave ours-hahahahaahah.

Had fun in Saigon but it is an insane city! So many working girls bars there-it wasn't like that last year. They called out to Steven making obscene gestures-but my dirty look shut them up. Really sad, so young. Went to a couple of pagodas on cyclos; I made incense offerings for everyone! Not sure I did it correctly but I did my best.

All is well now. As Steven says, if it was easy it woudln't be an adventure.

The Fantastic Four plus one is coming to Hoi An so we will be meeting up again. They have had a difficult time-bit by a cat and had to have rabies shots, and another one was cut by rusty metal and needed tetanus shot. I may need to travel with them. 😊

Off to have clothes made and drink 18 cent beers.

Life is grand.

Suzie and Steven

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