My friend Bob, and I before our kayaking trip in Halong Bay

Day 9: Travel Day and Hue

After a quick kayaking trip to explore some more of Halong Bay, we hopped a water taxi to take another 4 hour drive back to Hanoi. At the airport, we got ripped off by some girls at one of the stores/restaurants in the airport. Their scam had a few different aspects: First, there was a small price tag on the item (coke, water, candy, snacks), that you might not have noticed, so the customer asks them for the price of the product. They typically quote something higher. Then, when the customer brings it to them to ring it up, they quickly take off the price tag (there are about 10 girls working behind the counter). Of course, it doesn’t really matter what the price is, because they punch in random prices. Finally, they tell you at the end that they don’t have enough change, so they want to give you pieces of “candy” in exchange – 1 piece per 1000 Vietnamese Dong. The thing is that they do have enough change, the candy is actually cough drops and they sell 30 for about 5000 dong. We arrive in Hue and are hounded by folks claiming to be able to take our group of five and all our luggage. Of course, when we reach the car, they try to explain that they want to put us in separate cars. This is an unacceptable option because we aren’t sure if they will take us the right place and we can’t get separated. Once on the road (all in the same vehicle with me sitting on the floor), the driver pulled off at a gas station and started unloading all of luggage. We started freaking out, but after a while realized that he was merely rearranging the luggage so I wouldn’t have to sit on the floor. Later, along the way, our driver apparently almost hit an older couple on a motorbike and they drove up next to him and started freaking out on him. Then, at an intersection, they both got off the bike and started yelling more. It was pretty exciting. We arrived at our hotel and it sucked. But, we quickly headed out the door to go to Carambole for dinner. We had to wait a half hour, so we walked over to what has now become my favorite bar of all time. The DMZ bar and café. The manager or owner (more likely manager, because I think everything in Hue is government run), was talkative and fun. There were all sorts of graffite on the wall and we had the chance to have our new favorite beer – Huda. I love that bar. Carambole was fantastic, and I am happy to report that my appetite is back in full force. I had a set menu that included about four main entrees. I also had dessert. We returned to our crappy hotel with massive rooms, so big that the air conditioning was effectively useless. That’s not all though, our room came equipped with cockroaches (not one, but many) and some gekkos (the gekkos actually don’t really bother us at this point). The bed itself was a hard piece of foam. It was fantastic.