Sunday 1st July - Hanoi
The flight to Vietnam was pretty straight forward. We met a couple of Canadian girls, , in the airport that I had met elsewhere on my trip, the waterfall in Luang Prabang and again in Vang Vieng. So we hung out with them during the flight.
I had been warned by a few people about Vietnam. I had been told that you are permanently pestered by hotel touts, taxi drivers and people selling you things. I was told that they are very aggressive negotiators, rip you off and lie through their teeth.
As soon as we walked out of the airport about 3 taxi drivers ran up to us and pretty much tried to push us into their taxis. Prices started high and on driver offered us $10. Another offered us $7 so we asked if he could match it. He thought about it a bit and then reluctantly agreed. We drove 2 minutes out of the airport where he stopped the car and demanded $24 up front!! The bloody cheek. It took us 10 minutes of "negotiations" to finally agree on $14. We paid half up front and the rest would be when we got to the hotel, Camelia 5.
He stopped 3 times en-route, we think to ask directions. Then he took us to the wrong hotel, who tried to unload our bags and get us in. After we sorted that out, we drove along a bit more and I ended up navigating him in from the map in my lonely planet!
When we got there the remaining people paid their money and w checked out our rooms. After accepting the room I went back down to sign the register and the Canadian girls were still arguing with the taxi driver! He was saying that one person had not paid.
The guy who worked in the hotel was helping out and even got his own wallet out to pay the money the driver was asking for. We told him not to, and somehow got the driver to admit he had an extra 32,000dong from one of the girls that he was claiming was his tip! We laughed, said he asked for $14, we gave him $14 and there was no tip. The hotel guy then kicked him out!
We dropped our kit in our rooms and went out for some food. After dinner we went to a bar called the Golden Drum for a quick beer. They closed at 11:30, so w walked back to the hotel.
When we got back we looked into boat trips to Ha Long Bay. There was a one-day or a two-day trip that we couldn't decide which to do. We ended up going for the 2 day trip, which included one night sleeping on the boat. We also booked a sleeper bus to Hue for the evening we get back from the boat trip.