Monday, September 7, 2009

out of hanoi

so when we got to hanoi neither of us was really excited about vietnam. everyone we had met was really unfriendly. and even if we were buying something from someone, they still acted like we were just a pain in the ass. so when the bus rolled back into hanoi, we were like 'let's just check bus tickets to hue' (a city farther south of hanoi). so we got in a cab on the main road because the ones at the bus station seem extra creepy. and we told him we wanted to go to this other bus station farther south. and this guy starts driving, but really really slow. like ridiculously slow. and i was watching the meter, and i'm not really good at estimating kilometers, but it seemed like we hadn't gone as far as the meter said. so i asked foo if she thought the meter was going fast. she wasn't really sure either, but it seemed like it. eventually i looked at his odometer. and indeed the taxi meter was ticking at at least twice the rate of the car odometer. so we told the taxi man to stop and we got out and he looked all confused, but it cost 50,000 dong (almost $3). and we had no idea where we were. but if we stayed in the cheating man's taxi, it would be like condoning his behavior. so we waited for another taxi. this one didn't have a fast meter, but started his meter at 1km. so we lost about 50 cents there. uhhh. vietnam.
so after finally getting there we discover that buses no longer go to hue from that station. awesome. so we were really far from where we needed to be, were cheated twice, and couldn't get a bus out. so we sat down for a while and touts were swarming around us like mosquitoes trying to sell us tickets or cab rides. we sat and decided to just stay in hanoi for the night to regroup.
we walked outside the bus station, and magically, foo said, 'this bus goes where we need to go.' i don't know how she knew that. she doesn't know any vietnamese. anyway, we got on the public bus for 3000 dong each. that's like 15 cents or something. way better than our 87000 dong cab ride. we found a hotel. and decided to be nice to ourselves for enduring vietnam thus far. we got a 3 star hotel for $20 per night for two nights. so we sat down and decided to figure out what to do. the options were: fly from hanoi to cambodia, to thailand, or to singapore. this means skipping vietnam which seemed like an ok plan. another option was buying an 'open tour' bus ticket. so going through vietnam.
after two night and two rooms in our hotel (the first one had an a/c unit that made a really loud noise and vibrated the wall and bed. terrible) we decided to go through vietnam. foo had one good meal and i felt like it would be a shame to miss it. so after much research we found that actual sinh cafe, which sells bus tickets. but you can buy all your tickets at once for wayyyy cheaper. like $34 per person for buses through the whole country. after passing several copycat sinh cafes along the two block route to the actual one, we got there, bought tickets. and that was that.

No comments: