I am a little behind my schedule. Sorry for this. Two days ago I arrived in the imperial city of Hue in Vietnam. My trip was a bit complicated as this was the other flight which had been cancelled due to the excellent servics of the travelagency in Hanoi (for those who still remember the long and boring story of me wanting to save some dollars by buying the internal flights directly in Vietnam...). They had then booked me a flight (only business class was still available) to Da Nang, around 110 km south of Hue. The problem was just that I arrived auite late and all the trains and buses by that time had already left. Therefore I tried to get a stand by ticket for one of the flights to Hue or an earlier flight to Da Nang. This turned out to be impossible. And for the first time in my life, I was really frustrated for not being able to communicate effectively with people because of language difficulties. My tiny bits of Vietnamese were not enough to explain the complexity of the situation neither was the level of English of any of the ladies from Vietnam Airlines at Ho Chi Minh airport. I had already tried when checking in in Phnom Penh, but there I was told that this operation could only be done in Vietnam.. (I wonder why ??)
In the end, after one hour of hassle and in-depth-reflexion on all the options, I just decided to leave everything as it is and to see what I can do when arriving in Da Nang. I then profited from the business class lounge - something I had never experienced before and I have to say that I could get used to this...
Once arrived in Da Nang, I asked at a desk for taxi services and was told that a taxi would cost 50 US $. But I was lucky: A Vietnamese lady also wanted to gothat way and so we shared the taxi and the costs and I safely made it to Hue, where I arrived at 9 pm. The very nice Vietnamese lady that I shared the taxi with (by the way: we spoke French together !!) tried to convince me not to go to the hotel where I had booked and said that it was a very bad hotel. Knowing this trick from Hanoi, I thougt I was particularly lever to insist to go thereand was especially paying attention to where we were going. She directed the taxi to the right hotel. After having seen, or better smelled my room, I thought that she might have been right. The hotel certainly has seen better times: the room smelled like as if no window had been opened for ages and there was mould in the corners.. After having opened the windows for a while it was actually not that bad anymore..
I still went out for dinner to a place recommended on the Lonely Planet. A restaurant on wooden stilts with Vietnamese people only (which as such is positive), but the problem was that ut was a quite vulgar young crowd, invited by a 40 year old Vietnamese living since nore than 20 years in the US. They were 6 and had already emptied 3 boxes of Carlsberg (with 24 bottles each) and were eating like pigs and spitting on the floor every three or four seconds. The "American" behaved like the big hero and had to show to all the others how rich he was. His English was really bad, escpecially for having lived in the US for 20 years... He wantedto chat with me telling me how cheap everything was here and that he could show me a place where to get a woman for the whole night for only 20 US $. He could not at all understand why I would not do that.. He touched the waitress all the time who became quite angry with him. I ate my soup and grilled fish really quickly and got out of there really quickly...
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