Ding-dong on the way to Dong Ha

• Timreis's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Dong Ha

Trip Start Nov 01, 2006 Previous
Entry Trip End Oct 31, 2007 Next
Entry

  Dong Ha, Vietnam
Tuesday, March 6, 2007

To continue our way of doing things a little differently and not following the traveller pack, this morning (after my favourite breakfast of, admittedly created for travellers, fruit, yoghurt and muesli) we headed for Hue bus station to get a bus to Dong Ha.  We had a bit of an argument with the moto drivers shortly into the journey when they realised through talking to me that we wanted to go to the bus station, not the train station.  We had stated the bus station right from the beginning but they'd got the wrong idea.  Anyway, it turned out the bus station was 'far, very far' and that they wanted us to pay them double what we'd agreed.  So, a roadside argument ensued where they claimed it was 10km away and we refused to pay their price, ending finally in us agreeing to pay almost what they were asking.  I kept my eye on the milometre the whole time and the journey was actually on 6km, so I was pretty mad that they'd made such a fuss about it being 10.  Anyway, we had a bus to catch so we paid our money and went to ask about tickets

01 Local 'colour' (Dong Ha)

.  There we discovered that the regular bus to Dong Ha was full, but there was an enterprising man who was happy to take us on his minibus for 50,000 dong each, which was more than double what he was charging the locals.  (This double charging happens all the time, both advertised and more underhand, and both kinds we find quite annoying).   If we wanted to get to Dong Ha anytime soon, we had little choice but to get on his bus, but we managed to beat him down to 40,000 each.  He then proceeded to squash as many people as was humanly possible into the minibus, so we spent a very uncomfortable hour with our legs up somewhere near our ears, and arrived with numb feet due to our circulation having been cut by the cramped position.  Just remind us, why are we determined to do things our own way? 

After checking into the first hotel we saw, the next job was to go to the station and book our journey out to Hanoi tomorrow.  Unfortunately the only train with any space on it (and then only seats, not the beds we would have liked for a night journey) doesn't leave till 5pm, so we've got rather more time than we wanted in this fairly dull town.  We were thinking of doing our tour to the DMZ and Vinh Moc tunnels this afternoon, but when we found out about the train time we decided to do it tomorrow instead to use up some of the long day.  So today we wandered to the market and had an interesting lunch there alongside the locals.  The lady serving at the stall where we had a bowl of noodles took a liking to me, and came and sat herself pressed up against me, ate some of the food (which I'd thankfully finished with) from my bowl with my chopsticks, ran her hands up and down my torso as if sizing me up, played with my hair, and wiped the sweat from my nose.  All rather strange and a little too close to comfort, but it was certainly an experience!   (R)

Slideshow Print this entry Share Hanoi hotels

Previous Entry Next Entry