The one about causing a scene!
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2008
1
27
117
Trip End
??? ??, 2009
Hanoi,
Vietnam
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
friday 10 october...
and what a pain in the arse day today was, taken up with not much but trying desperately to get our hands on OUR cash! anyway, so after breakfast, we decided that today would be a day for organising our next withdrawal and booking a bus to our next destination - vang vieng - before getting a tuk tuk to take us the 30km out of town to see this famed waterfall everyone was talking about. unfortunately, ALL was not to go to plan! after asking around for bus hire quotes, we walked into town, to go to the bank, so that i could try and withdraw some money over the counter, using my debit card. however, firstly she couldn't take my card being that half the world don't know what cirrus is, and secondly, she didn't believe they could hand out the amount of cash we were talking about. so, with that, she reached for a map and traced a route to luang prabang's main bank across the other side of town. go there, she said, they'll be able to help you. this all sounded quite good, and naively, i guess, i believed that maybe yes, they would accept cirrus, and that this time i'd be able to make a huge withdrawal without having to use the ATM, for which i keep getting charged. oh yes, that old chestnut has to be sorted with my bank. still not a big fan of natwest! anyway, sweating from the heat of the midday sun, we trekked across to this second bank. once there, we took a ticket - ARGOS style, and sat down with the entirety of luang prabang to wait for our turn. during our wait, we met a man - i think his name was simon - who had come from australia. he said he'd just realised he didn't have enough money to pay the moped driver, who'd brought him into town, and hoped he'd be able to pick up the cash here to pay the man and keep his head afloat while in town. unfortunately his card had been declined in a couple of other places already so times seemed to be desperate. anyway, we chatted for a while as he recommended the way to go once we were in oz. he warned us that in places, it can be SO hot that the birds practically fall out of the sky! sounds entertaining and brutal! finally, after 45 minutes wait, i was called up to the desk to talk about getting this money. and this is when the trouble starts and i begin to feel like i could lock and load and kill this woman who's declining my card! basically, first off she asks for ID, to which i show her my driver's licence. uh no, she says, you need to have brought your passport. unable to deal with this woman on my own, already feeling the rage build up inside, i turn to sean, to interrupt his conversation with the nice oz guy, to ask him for help. we say we weren't told anything about bringing our passports and that they're back at our guesthouse across town. he shows his driver's licence. no good either. i start mumbling that i can show her my national insurance card, my european health card, and if she really wants to know, i'll even divulge my bra size to her. i am not happy! she turns to say something in laos to the guy sat next to her and he picks up the phone to call for help, i think. after, she turns and says she can't do anything for us without our passports, to which we say again we weren't told anything about bringing them and she says again she can't help us. i say could she even take money from my card, to which she says no and that if i want money now i'll have to use the ATM outside. i'm still stood there wondering whether we might still have time for sean to run over to our guesthouse to get our passports and for him to get money out on his card, but the time is ticking and we think we'd probably have to start all over again with a new ARGOS ticket, so we go. or rather i storm off, ever so slightly, so they know i'm pissed with them, regardless of whether they're laos and i'm english and should be giving off a good impression. balls to that! us english can be mad and emotional and aggressive when things don't go our way and they better get used to it! what makes this whole episode worse is that after we say we've been to the other bank so where else can we go now for money, she points out a third bank right in town. right in town! if we'd had this same trouble there, at least there would have been time to go back and get our passports! the whole thing sucks, made worse by the fact that sean is so able to stay so calm while i feel like blowing my top and crying!
contd. writing from hue, vietnam, on tues oct 28!
where were we??? so after storming off, we go for a fruitshake - nothing like drowning your sorrows - even though we know we literally have no money if this third bank doesn't pay out and we can't get the ATMs to work until monday. anyway, afterwards, we head into town by-passing laos airlines, where we plan to buy a ticket for between vientiane and hanoi so we don't have to take yet another death-defying bus trip across laos. well, they say we can get one but not until the day after we'd planned, and we need our passports to book the tickets. why didn't we know this already? so no money and no plane ticket now. in town, we bump into sean's 'brother' again, who seems to be having the best time, nothing having gone wrong for him, and everything going to schedule. i can see now why sean said it was a good idea to research before we set off on this trip. but back then, in my frame of mind, not wanting to be out here at all, i really didn't want to even touch those lonely planet guides! anyway, in town, we head in to find this third bank, and once found we pray it will be open tomorrow or we are just a little bit in trouble! we get a snack from a street vendor and have a miserable mooch - well, i do, still panicking about money - and later try to find the fruitshake cafe - without success AGAIN - and so have tea in a local cafe, which takes forever to arrive, but which, if i can remember, now writing weeks later, was absolutely delicious - as all real local food tends to be! we have drinks in the hive bar, before heading home, just in time for the gates. so, in conclusion, our plan to get money, get a plane ticket, and get a tuk tuk to see this famed waterfall all fell through! goody!
sat 11 oct
this morning we wake, have breakfast, and pray we can get this money, get a plane ticket, and maybe, just maybe get to see the waterfall! unfortunately however, bad tummies stop play, meaning we only have time to get some money, book our plane ticket and book our bus outta here! in the end, after most of the day has been and gone, sensing we have to get something out of the day, we head down to the river to haggle with the boat people to take us across the river for as little as possible. once dumped on the other side, away from the main boat dock, we have to clamber up a sandy bank, where we enter the midst of a local town, which i don't believe was on the map! and automatically, there are a few stares off some of the older locals, who hate the foreign folk; and kids running up to us asking for pens, which i'm afraid of which we had none. actually, i'm afraid to say, while in laos, we managed to do none of the good deeds i had read about and hoped to do, including contributing a little money to the 'big brother mouse' organisation, to buy books for the local kids; going to a school to read to the kids and help them practice their english; or giving empty bottles to the children's cultural centre, in luang prabang which they could recycle for money. ah well. it seems like the majority of places we go to have so little money that they have to live and work in their homes and wash their clothes in the rainwater in the street, which as i write this on october 29 - while it's absolutely chucking it down and so no good weather to do anything much but blog or shop for shorts - as sean's doing now for if it ever becomes hot and dry enough again to warrant new shorts - some woman has just emerged from her home, plunged a pair of shorts into the flooded street and swished them about to wash them, supposedly! anyway, the jist of the story is that at any given moment there is a time and a place where we might be able to help someone. anyway, i'm not mother teresa, entirely, so back to slagging off the bad and bigging up the good! so, after walking through the village, we get to our first ticket 'booth' for one of the several temples on the island, but having been told by our boat driver that we only have an hour or so we decide to carry on, before being stopped by a little kid asking if he could be our guide! and i'm afraid, yet again, we had to say no, and so walked on until we found the temple we aimed to see. when we get there, there seems to be absolutely no-one around so we gather we're either there late in the day or it's just one of the lesser viewed temples. anyway, we cross a stone bridge that looks like it should appear in an indiana jones movie and walk around the many stupas surrounding the old temple, which are all covered in moss, as you do, wondering whether we should pay someone for our entry ticket. after a few minutes, i see a ticket table surrounded by one man, who looks like any local off the street, and a bunch of buddhist monk young men, and so walk over to buy my ticket, before we have a quick chat about where i'm from and where i'm going and the usual questions asked by everyone, before sean comes over to buy his ticket. and this is the point when he looks me in the eye and mutters - much the same way as your mum or dad might, if they want to give you a good telling off, if you've shamed or embarassed them, but while in the company of others who they don't want to hear their lecture - that maybe i should cover my skinny top clad self with a shirt, so not to offend the monks, and maybe i shouldn't have stood over them, because this too is disrespectful to them, and maybe i shouldn't have passed my money directly into the hand of one of the monks, because they shouldn't take anything from a woman. and all this is supposed to have offended them, despite them chatting away merrily to me a few minutes ago. anyway, after storming off for a bit, feeling very much pissed off because we are no longer back in the day when women were seen but not heard, we take a mooch around the temple before being led off to one almighty cave, where we can see yet more hidden buddha images. and this place, although amazing and deep, i'm sure, i can't stop imagining it in that 'descent' film, and so - along with the fact i have two left feet and wouldn't live to tell this tale had i walked down the slippery steps to see the rest of the cave - i stay up top, in the dark, hoping sean and the guide return in one piece and that some crazy psycho monster doesn't pop up to eat me alive at any minute! after a while and their return, we leave to head back to the boat, walking through the village who ALL seem to have congregated for dinner, and passed a group of kids playing on the sandy bank we had to clamber up earlier, who are now chucking themselves around and into the mekong below, and down the bank until we get back to the boat. on the other side we pay our driver a tip for waiting for so long with not much to do and return home for dinner, again in the antique restaurant across the street from us, but this time for seaweed and mekong fish for sean, and a bad excuse for a burger for me. and oh yes, this was the night we were kicked out of the internet cafe because of the family party taking place right then and there under our noses... and how long ago does that now seem?! i really am behind!
