Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Well Ho Chi Minh City did not get off to a good start. When we booked the night bus from Dalat, the travel agent in Nha Trang told us that it got to HCMC in the morning. So no need for a hotel, we would sleep on the bus. First of all, the bus...it was a local bus not a tourist bus so not only were we the only westerners on the bus we were the only women. We caused quite a stir! the poor man who was sitting beside me was more afraid of me than I was of him I think. Ugh the bus was horrible, icky plastic seats and horrible nylon blankets. The bus people were very nice and looked after us well and made sure we were "comfortable' but eeew. And we had slept in the hut the night before and the novelty had worn off the whole roughing it thing for me. So it was either freezing or roasting the whole time and so uncomfortable. And we stopped about four times. Then just when I was getting to sleep, the boy is down telling us we are at our stop! at 3am! two hours early! Off we went into the hotel, waking up the poor bell boys in reception who looked at us as if we were crazy. "No room, no room". Well we just looked at them. They had to say it again. and again. So we left our bags there and went off for a stroll around HCMC at 3am. It looked like everything was closed up but we found a bar and had a drink and weighed up our options. We were in what's called the "backpacker ghetto" in the Lonely planet but all the hotels were closed except for some little man who was trying to get us to go down an alley for rooms. No thanks! We decided we would just wake up the people at the first accommodation we came to, so we did and we got a room for $25 which is nothing. It was DISGUSTING! but we were so tired we didn't care and just crashed out. The poor girl in reception in the morning could not understand why were weren't staying another night....
