Hue
Trip Start
Sep 05, 2008
1
50
68
Trip End
Ongoing
Hue,
Vietnam
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
We were up and out by 8 for a boat trip up the Mekong to see various temples and tombs. An absolute bargain at US$5 per person for a nine hour trip, including motorbike taxis to some of the sights further from the river. The boat wasn't luxurious, but it was more than good enough. We pulled our plastic chairs into a circle, the four of us, and got on with the banter.
It was a fairly mixed crowd of British, American, French, German and Miscellaneous on the boat. One of the British lads was dressed in an outfit so camp it would have made Julian Clary blush. A Trilby hat perched at a jaunty angle above his unshaven bumfluff face, a T-shirt covered with messy handwriting, mostly in back and dayglo colours, with the arms torn off, and skinny-fit jean shorts to just below his knees. White trainers on his feet over one dayglo green sock, the other sock pink with black polka dots. Catherine insists that this lad is a "London fashion victim". I maintain that he is a numpty, and that if that is what passes for fashion nowadays I am much, much older than I realised. I would have taken a photo, but to look at him made me too angry.
The people running the boat weren't shy about trying to increase their profit margin. At every opportunity they were offering food and drink. Although we had been told that lunch was included, it soon became apparent that we would get the "delicacy" of steamed rice and cabbage for free;anything else we would have to pay for. We weren't annoyed; we knew to expect this, and to be fair they would offer us stuff, but they weren't insistent.
We saw a couple of large and impressive tombs of past emperors, one of them was reached by motorbike taxi; an army of bikes were witing for usat the boat stop, and ferried us up to the tomb and back. Lesss precarious than it sounds, and probably the best fun of the day.
We arrived back to find Johnny and Laura, the Northern Irish couple. They weren't happy. Back in Hanoi, whilst we had bought a single ticket to Hue, they had bought "open tickets" for Vietnam. This allows them to travel the length of the country on one ticket, making stops wherever they choose and needing to pre-book the next bus only a few hours in advance. The going rate for one of these tickets is US$40-50. They had been conned into paying US$100 each. Worse, much worse, still - the receipt that they'd been given was, they had now discovered, nothing more than a meaningless piece of paper. They had no onward journey, and being at least a 12-hour trip away from Hanoi it was unlikely they would go back to sort it out. This added real insult to the injury of the dreadful bus journey we'd taken together from Hanoi to Hue a few days ago.
We helped them try to search the web for the phone number of the office in Hanoi that they'd bought their "ticket" from; we couldn't find it anywhere. One of the men working at the hotel enquired as to what we were doing. Johnny explained to him what had happened. The man was quite upset by this; he looked up a local travel agency office, the same company that Johnny had used in Hanoi. He took Johnny there on his motorbike and went in with him. The ensuing conversation was in Vietnamese and Johnny understood none of it, but he could tell that the people in the travel agency were not budging. The hotel guy was quite passionate and started to shout at them (he later explained that he was threatening them with people he knew in Hanoi and that he could ruin the reputation of their business). Eventually they agreed, and gave Johnny and Laura full tickets for the rest of their journey.
The vast majority of Vietnamese people we've come across have been friendly, unassuming, and often quite shy. But, as our previous stories of bus travel have illustrated, there are a lot of people out to con you too. The man from the hotel had gone to lengths to help Johnny without being asked, and he asked for nothing in return, He had gone out of his way to help, and had really fought for them. Without that, they would have been even more out of pocket. Although there are con jobs going on left, right and centre, especially where transport is concerned, it's heartening to come across someone with such a sense of justice. We're glad we'd stayed here.
Comments
Its been emotinal chickeeeen..
beautiful Stew, just beautiful...