Day 4 - Misster Saigon

Gooooood morning Vietnam,

Ok I, promise that will be the last time I open a blog entry today with that salutation.. hehe
So it's bright and early here, 7am, I've already been up for about 30 minutes and just about to grab some breakfast at the Hoang Hai Long Hotel's restaurant here. 

Got in last night around 8:15pm from Bangkok, the flight was a quick one, just over an hour to get here.  First order of business at the airport was to pick up my entry visa for my stay here.  I quickly learned that 'line-ups' is a word that definitley doesn't translate well into the Vietnamese language.  Luckily it wasn't that long of a line-up, nonetheless the Vietnamese assistants, hired to help brainless foreigners give 3 pieces of paper to someone through a window and wait 15 minutes to have the visa attached to their passport, then pay their fee and be on their merry way, still felt it necessary to flex their line jumping skills to their appreciative patrons.

Next step was going through passport control.  Well I guess it paid to have to wait 15 minutes as the main line-up at passport control subsided and I was able to walk up with no delay.  The officer I dealt with was a girl probably in her late 20's to early 30's never dropped her cell phone while dealing with me.  She seemed to be on a pretty "important" phone call and was laughing away as she stamped me through.  Great!!
Her Olive Green uniform with the red shoulder flaps and gold stars signifying her rank was standard issue for the customs officer, and gave it some semblance of officiality, however her "professional" manner, and the throngs of her male colleagues who were huddled around a TV showing a late night soccer match from Europe gave it a very laisser tranquille first impression.

After getting my luggage, I headed out to the taxi ranks to grab a ride into town, only one hawker tried hard for my business originally offering a bargain price of $20 US into town.  Having read the going rate into town was only the equivalent of $5 US I brushed him off, even at his final offer of $15!!!

The taxi ride was something else!!  Yes, one of the first things anybody has told me about Vietnam was the scooters... "There's scooters everywhere!!"  "I want to know how your first time crossing the street is like!"
From my observation it seems like the scooters rule the majority of the road, and for the most part, unless they're turning right, all cars are relegated to the very left of the road.  At each red light, the scooter armies all amass as if they're getting ready for a 50cc road race through HCMC.  Girls side saddling on the back of their boyfriend's scooters, older generation Viet's with their wares loaded way too high, and yes entire families of four with little baby a hand slip away from some pretty wicked diaper road rash.

Exiting the taxi, my fare meter read exactly 100,000 VND (Vietnamese Dong is the official currency here)!! I was pretty impressed with the accuracy of the Lonely Planet guide on that one... Usually their price estimates are pretty off...  Nonetheless, as enterprising as Vietnamese are known to be, apparently what the meter reads isn't what you're supposed to pay!!!  My sweet taxi driver explained to me, that the real fare was 150,000 Dong, an exorbitant $2.50 US more than what the meter said.  (The current exchange rate is about 19,400 VND to 1 USD).  Knowing that it's not a good idea to get into a bickering match over $2.50 especially after only getting about 6 hours of sleep during the last three previous days, and just craving a shower and a clean bed, I settled for 140,000 Dong and I was on my merry way!!

Checking into the hotel i went up to my room on the 8th floor, and saw that I was assigned a room with 2 single beds.  When the receptionist called my room to ask if everything was OK with the room, I politely asked if it would be possible to change to a room with 1 double or queen bed instead.  She promptly said she would send someone up to push my two beds together!!!  I seriously laughed at this, however she had already hung up, and LITERALLY 30 seconds later a bellboy opened my door to push the beds together.  All sorted!!!

Just a side note for the previous paragraph - Personal space in Vietnam, like the rest of Asia, is pretty much non-existant.  I've already gone to the WC 3 times since Bangkok having to 'go' in front of cleaning ladies, and according to the Lonely Planet again, as was the case with the bellboy, most hotel staff don't bother knocking before entering a guest room!!

I headed back downstairs shortly after getting my luggage sorted, to use their computers as the WIFI in my room was sketchy and cutting out.  I needed to book the rest of my hotel rooms for the next 3 nights here in HCMC as I didn't want to stay the entire time at this hotel without knowing what a 3 star Vietnamese hotel was like.  By the way, I'm staying here just one more night, then moving to either the Sheraton Saigon Hotel & Towers or the Renaissance Riverside Hotel Saigon. 

So after getting more information about the hotel situation downstairs, it was time to head back up to my room to take a shower and head to bed.  No such luck!!  My room key all of a sudden stopped working.  The light on the door would flash green indicating that the door could be opened, however the handle wouldn't budge.  The front desk clerk thought that the key must have just gotten demagnitized (a common problem at hotels in the US with  magnetic stripes), however this card didn't have a magnetic stripe, it was a chip-card!!!  He reswiped it again, ensuring that it was like new, and back up to the 8th floor I went.  Second try, no different.  This time around, the front desk clerk recognized with my hand motions that the door wasn't opening even with the green light!!  So he summoned me back upstairs to wait for someone to have a look at the door.  2 minutes later a bellboy descended from upstairs to my room and had a go with my key and the master key, again no luck. Time to call in the backup to the backup.  A good 10 minutes passed as I waited outside my room when a second fellow, this time not dressed in a hotel uniform had a look at the door-lock and managed to make his way into the room with a super-secret real key that's normally hidden behind a brass nub underneath the main card swiper.  Once in the room, the two guys went to work on the lock, while I surreptitiously snapped a photo of them at work on my door.  I couldn't believe that this was actually happening...  

So now, I was wide awake and couldn't go to sleep even if I wanted to, so I decided to pack up a backpack full of clothes to hand out to the homeless and check out the neighbourhood a bit.  Upon exiting the hotel, I did a brisk 30 minute walkabout and was a bit dismayed to only have been propositioned for an hour of fun time three times!!!  Albeit two of the three times it was with the same dude, after brushing him off the first time, he took to his scooter to try and drum up business elsewhere, and we crossed paths again 15 minutes later!!!  Unfortunately on my walkabout there was some pretty interesting sights: groups of middleaged people sitting outside having a late-night drink, scores of youth off to the side of their scooters on dates, and throngs of night market staff tearing down their stalls and hauling insanely huge and heavy carts down the middle of the roads and not much else.

Back to the hotel to do this update. Time is now about 12:30am.  Of the three computers wtih internet access, the far left and right ones are in use by a Russian guy (right) and a French guy (left).  So I saddle up in between them and promptly knock out the power to the computer that I'm using.  Looking at the sparking power bar below the desk, I gingerly try to push all the plugs back into their sockets, only to knock out the power to the French guys computer!!  He wasn't too upset about it, so I went back and fiddled around again, only to knock out the Russian guys power!!!  He wasn't pissed, but decided to call it a night all the same...  After 3 quick reboots, the French guy and I are back online...  No luck... The French guy, wanting to have a conversation with me as we were speaking in French during the whole computer debacle, enticed me into a conversation that lasted til 2am, without me even touching a single key on the keyboard!!!

Funny side note, the Russian guy is sitting next to me right now!!!  He's actually pretty nice, and wanted to hear how the computers did last night...

I don't know why I'm up so early.  Oh yes I do, the scooters!!!  Thinking it was late morning commuters honking their way to work, I thought wow, it must be late, I've slept in the whole morning!!!  But no, bright and early, 6:30am, oh well, lots to do here, not much time, so I have to take advantage of the day while I can...  Well, that's the updates so far, I made it here safe and sound, yes its humid, even at night, ( i had the AC on at the lowest, 16 degrees celcius all night), and so far, it seems like its going to be a very interesting 4 days here in HCMC (formely Saigon before the communists took the city in 1975 for those of you wondering about the references above). 

Hope all is well with you wherever you are reading this from. 

Off for my first Vietnamese meal experience!!!

J