Day 5 - Monday, May 4, 2009 - Hanoi to Hue via Dong Ha (Part 2)

****I wrote this at 10:30 pm in Hue****

A team of motorbikes met us @ the place where the van from Dong Ha dropped us off. The agency must have called ahead, they brought us right to their hotel and tried very hard to get us to go on a motorbike tour of Hue. In fact every time we turned around they would shove pictures and testimonials in our faces. It was 2-3 hour motorbike tour, but we were pretty exhausted and we needed to find the place to get our ticket to bring us back to Dong Ha by 8am the next morning (it turned out we didn't need to be there until 8:30, a detail that would have prevented us a lot of anxiety had we known it...)

I looked up the place on google maps and saw it was only one block away. When we went to find it, we took a right instead of a left, because we didn't know which way was north. So we crossed the Perfume River and looked around and couldn't find it, so we asked around and some pointed one direction while others pointed the opposite. We made our way back towards the hotel and passed an older Vietnamese gentleman that was excited to meet us (in a seemingly genuine nature, not the lust for US dollars nature that we'd seen incessantly in Vietnam). He invited us for a drink down the road while he waited for his daughter to get off the bus. On the way down we passed one of the motorbike pushers from earlier in the day. He talked to James for a while, finally we were able to keep moving and found a spot that was supposed to be very cheap. Shortly after, we were sitting down in the usual plastic kids chairs and mini table we'd become so accustomed to and learned to love in Vietnam.

We talked to the gentleman for a few minutes before a familiar looking man appeared outside and was talking in Vietnamese to us. He started drawing his thumb under his chin, like a slitting throat motion. We looked at him confused and ask the older gentlemen what he was saying, he said he didn't know which was even more strange. (We constantly had our guards up for any suspicious goings on and this definitely set off our alarms) As the guy got on his bike he kept showing us 7 fingers, 7 fingers, 7 fingers and then a drinking motion, we finally realized that he didn't want us to get ripped off at this place and that we should only pay 7,000 dong for the drinks we were having, not 10,000. As soon as he appeared he was gone. We sat there puzzled, but fine none-the-less.

We said goodbye to our new found Vietnamese friend and headed to the travel agency (which we finally had credible directions to this time) We purchased our ticket for $4 without a hitch and were back at the hotel for a swim in the pool in no time.

We went to the Western (Gwielo) bar for a pool game and some much needed familiar food. I ordered potato skins and a calzone, so much for the authentic Vietnamese experience. I just couldn't help myself, you can't even find this food in Hong Kong (actually you can rarely find any good food in Hong Kong, Meaghan and I joke that we're going to make a Hong Kong themed restaurant back in the States and call it "Empty Carbs & Shitty Meat")

After eating we wandered around for quite a while, James bought some sunglasses and we stumbled across a coffee shop on the roof of a book store. With my brain humming from a nice dose of caffeine we headed back. Again we were incessantly pestered by motorbike drivers for hire, although it didn't help that we kept saying "Bow you tee en" Which means "how much?".

We returned to the hotel to prepare for an early morning and more hours on a bus tomorrow, which will probably be the case for the next few days. Things keep falling into place, we've been fortunate thus far. I'm hoping our good fortune will continue as we head into Laos tomorrow and Cambodia in a few days.

***Finished writing at 11:15 on May 4***