Poagao's Journal

Absolutely Not Your Monkey

May 22 2015

Vietnam 1

I really was not feeling it this morning when I got up, packed some things and headed to the airport with Chenbl. We were going to Vietnam; I knew it intellectually, but I just couldn’t get it into my head. It was a grey, cool day, not at all like summer. The copies of my book hadn’t yet arrived, so I couldn’t bring one to Prince Roy as I’d said I would. I also forgot a bunch of stuff. I was all kinds of a mess.

The airline, Cathay Pacific, formerly one of my favorites, was also kind of a mess. We got shafted to the back parking lot in Hong Kong, having to go up and down those presidential-style waving ramps, and the Popeyes Chicken failed to revive my spirits. On the way out of HK, we were put in a holding pen obviously designed for people destined for Southeast Asian countries, all dim lighting and concrete like a bad video game. You wouldn’t take a flight to Japan from that place.

planeThe flight to Hanoi was ok. A bunch of loud Australians sat behind us, but it wasn’t any more irksome than loud mainland Chinese. We did fly past a truly magnificent thundercell, flashes of lightning strobing through the sunset.

Hanoi’s international airport is brand spanking new, but when we took the bus to the domestic airport, we found what appeared to be an old Chinese train station. I was surprised to see they had wifi.

The flight to Ho Chi Minh City was pretty empty. The Vietnamese passengers did pretty much whatever they wanted, seats back, shoes off, lying across aisles. Chenbl swore one guy was even smoking a cigarette, but the stewardesses didn’t seem bothered at any of it.

After we touched down and changed money, we then proceeded to get swindled out of a large amount of it by a taxi driver, just as the guidebook says. Then the hotel we booked, the “Victory”, tried to give us an awful room. We went down to the desk and demanded a slightly less awful room. Yay us. We’re pretty much going to assume everyone we don’t know here is trying to cheat us, I guess.

posted by Poagao at 2:23 am  

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