Two weekends ago I had my first trip away. A small group of us escaped from school on Friday afternoon and headed to catch the hovercraft to Vung Tau, From there the plan was to continue to Long Hai, where we'd booked accommodation. We arrived in darkness to what looked like a fairly swanky hotel. We decided we'd like rooms by the beach and this was when it all started to turn a little strange. We were transported on a large golf buggy type thing down a very dark road and then had to wait ages for someone to come and open the gate. One of the crew started to look at the geckos and she almost fell off the buggy as it started to move as she was getting back on. Everything was in darkness. We stopped outside some villas and went to inspect the rooms - we were not impressed. We asked to be taken back to the main hotel to look at some rooms there and still were not impressed. I couldn't help but compare them to Ecuador where I stayed in beautiful places for around $15. This place expected us to pay $60 a night for a room that was even close to the standard I knew from Ecuador. We tried to reason with the receptionist to drop the price, but she was unable to help us. We ordered some cold beers and a taxi and waited to head back to Vung Tau - the taxi took forever.
Luckily we were all fairly chilled about it...I did go rather quiet but that was because I was needing food.
Vung Tau has a fairly seedy reputation - it is where Gary Glitter was caught! We eventually got to the Sammy Hotel and asked to see the rooms before deciding whether to stay. The boys sat down to wait whilst us girlies went to inspect. We got out of the lift to a floor in total darkness - there were a few comments about the fact we seemed to have found ourselves in an episode of Fawlty Towers! We looked down a dark corridor and saw electric cables hanging down and very obvious signs of work...oh dear we thought! We were extremely relieved when we were then shown rooms on the floor below which were very nice - hurray!
We checked in and headed out to find food as by now it was nearly 10.00pm. Luckily there was a beach bar across the road who said they could order us pizzas, I proceeded to order a rum and coke.
Most of the next day was spent chilling on the beach and swimming in the beautifully warm sea - splendid. We had ice creams to make it feel even more like a holiday.
In the afternoon, Fiona (yes there is more than one Fiona here - weird!) and I went to have a massage back at the hotel. This was another strange experience. We had to pay up front which I've never experienced before and were then shown to a room. We sat and waited. A lady came in and gave me two towels and indicated that we were to strip off. I've also never had a massage where the lady is in the room while you disrobe. The massage began, with no oil. It was also quite disconcerting that the two ladies kept giggling and chatting. I could recognise some of the techniques being used but found it all very strange - with hindsight we should have stopped them and asked for our money back. At the end my lady very rudely asked for a tip - again after not leaving the room while we got dressed. I refused and we scarpered as quickly as poss discussing how weird it had all been!
In the evening we had delicious local food on the beach and went back to drink more cocktails at the beach bar. I hadn't expected a late one, but before we knew it it was 3am and I was dozing off on the sofa!
I loved the beach at night, it really came to life with street food sellers, bonfires, joss sticks burning - it was fascinating and was one of those 'I'm in a different country' moments.
The next day I was fairly fragile and we did very little until it was time to get the boat back to Ho Chi Minh. Unfortunately my ticket for the boat had got wet and was falling apart - they wouldn't accept it and a man was shouting at me in Vietnamese. My friend Carolyn tried to talk to him (she's been here for six years and speaks Vietnamese really well), but that made him even more angry. So I had to run in the pouring rain to get another one - fairly horrible experience.
Once on the boat we all crashed out and in less than two hours we were back in HCMC, where we got shouted at again, this time by a taxi driver. He wanted us to use his more expensive taxi and was trying to make us get out of the one we were in - again a fairly frightening experience.
Although being shouted at in a language I don't understand was scary and intimidating, it has not put me off Vietnam. I'm looking forward to more adventures, half term is in three weeks time and I'm going to head to Hoi An.
No comments:
Post a Comment