Luxury, Here We Come!
Trip Start
Dec 02, 2008
1
33
37
Trip End
Jan 03, 2009
Ho Chi Minh City,
Vietnam
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
We went out for an early breakfast back at Sozo (the restaurant we went to a couple days back). Yummy bagels... truly a place to eat at if you ever travel here.
After breakfast, we went back to the Lan Anh to collect our bags and collectively check-out. I went to the front counter, ready to pay my bill, when to my surprise he hands me a bill for over $200 AUD! "I think you've charged us the wrong room rate, we're supposed to be $24 US a night," says I. "Yes, but you did an international phone call for 15 minutes on the 26th December," says the stupid manager. That was a reverse-charge call to Travelex in regards to our CashPassports when we had money problems the other day. Read that? REVERSE-CHARGE. I told him in no uncertain terms that this was absolute bullshit. It's a reverse-charge call! He said to Kythera, "if it was a reverse-charge call, why didn't you go to the Post Office instead of making it in your room?" His logic was flawless
View from our balcony
. Why didn't we go to a place where you mail things to make a reverse-charge phone call? We never thought of it. It seems so obvious now. Einstein Award goes to Lan Anh manager at this point - massive ceremony and everything... tooting horns, trophy handed over by buxom ex-actress (Brooke Shields perhaps). Sarcasm ends here.I must admit, things got a little heated at this point, especially when he started mocking Kythera behind his back. I had to remove myself from the situation otherwise I would've hit him. Hard.
We ended up checking and paying the bill - he'd overcharged us anyway, by about $30 AUD, by the way... we told him to change the bill and give us our passports back before we called the police - and resolved to do a couple of reviews on TripAdvisor, AsiaRooms and Lonely Planet websites to advise people not to visit. This was not only for the ridiculous phone call charge, but for the service, the rooms and the mockery.
End stupid, crappy start to day here. Begin nice part of day here.
We walked our baggage around the corner to the Vien Dong Hotel, a 3-star luxury hotel. We checked into our room (we'd chosen a deluxe room) and to be honest, it wasn't what we expected from a luxury hotel. It was an inwards-facing room, with no balcony. We immediately rang through to reception to ask for a balcony room. No chance until tomorrow, they said. Kythera decided to check out the Executive Suite room which we thought was a bit more pricey ($175 US per night which I think is around $360 per night) and perhaps out of our price range really
View from our balcony
. We looked it over. Luxury doesn't half say it. It's two rooms, both with massive LCD TVs, a kingsize bed, a jacuzzi in the parents bedroom (of course!), and two balconies. We asked the price and got a discount down to $135 US per night. Considering that for the other room we were going to pay $117 US per night, we decided to pay the extra $13 US and live in the lap of luxury for the remainder of our trip. That sucks, the remainder of our trip. We haven't much time left now! I am going to miss this place, it's really starting to feel like home. In a touristy way.
We relaxed for the rest of the afternoon (it rained anyway... in Saigon, at around 3pm every day, it rains buckets) and watched a couple of movies. The kids napped.
After a couple of relaxing hours, we went out to look for dinner. It started to rain buckets again so we decided to go back to Milwaukee's for a fourth time (the most we have ever visited any restaurant in this country).
We watched the rain come down onto the street below and slowly watched the water rise before the street was flooded and water was coming onto the streets. I went down to see how deep it was on the street and it was halfway between my wrist and elbow. That is a crazy amount of water. It didn't seem to faze the motorcycle and taxi drivers, though. They went through at breakneck pace. Amazed we didn't see any accidents.
After dinner, we went back to the hotel and put the kids to bed (they had their own room with TV, so they watched Cartoon Network to sleep) and watched a couple of movies
View from our balcony
. Later on, we had a jacuzzi bath and reminded ourselves how awesome it will be when we get home to have a room to ourselves again. Oh, one thing I didn't mention. We heard some music and talking coming through REALLY LOUDLY at about 11pm at night (we were still up). We thought it might be some more performances in the park opposite (they've been doing them daily up until NYE) but I looked out the window, over into the park, and saw a TV on, with a few Vietnamese people watching it. It was so loud that we could hear all the words and music (and it was louder than our TV)... but we were 300 metres away and five floors up! Incredible.
Vietnamese kids don't seem to have a bedtime, and people don't seem to spend too much time in their homes. They eat out three times daily as well as socialise with their huge extended families and friends... and of course work. Many people do not work a 9-5 job here. It's more like 5 or 6am until 2am. Some people even sleep at their places of work - especially hotel staff. There's been many times here that we have stepped over sleeping hotel staff as we exit early for breakfast or a taxi to the airport. It's a strange thing that's unique to Vietnam.
Nice, relaxing day today - apart from the shitty morning. Tomorrow, we head out to see some more Saigon sights - including the Reunification Palace and War Remnants Museum, which is supposed to be the best thing to see of all the sights.
