We finished eating at the Little Buddha Vegetarian restaurant and made our way back toward tourist cafe that was getting our plane tickets ready.
On the way we saw a sight that we had seen several times in Ho Chi Minh City, that I haven't mentioned in previous posts. All over Saigon there are people on the sidewalks, either sitting in place or walking around, with scales for weighing people. It was one of the odder ways I've ever seen poor people try to make money and didn't seem like it would be that profitable. But there were many different people with scales in just about every public high-traffic area around the city, so it must have been something people do. Maybe the Vietnamese don't have scales at home. Of course I don't think we ever saw an overweight Vietnamese person on the entire trip so I'm not even sure why they need to weigh themselves.
We got back to the tourist cafe, picked up our tickets for the two flights (Saigon-Hué and Hué-Hanoi) as well as our luggage and went out to find a cab. There was a guy across the street with a little brown piece of crap sub-compact and a taxi sign on the top. He ran over and helped us across with our suitcases and I asked him how much to the airport.
"Run meter," he said.
At the end of the ride he really did charge us the meter price, about 130,000d. I gave him 200,000d and told him to keep the change. I guess the best cabs to take in Saigon are the ones that look like independent drivers with worn out used cars. He was the only one that didn't try to take advantage of the stupid American tourists.
We had quite a while to wait at Ho Chi Minh City airport since we got there really early. Lisa left me in a cafe with our stuff to go look for souvenirs and snacks, while I commenced getting liqueured up.
I really hate flying. But after an Ativan and a couple of beers it's not so bad.
We got on the plane and it was only about half full. For those of you wondering, Vietnam Airlines flies regular jets like Airbus and not little third world prop puddle-jumpers like you were imagining in your Western mind.
After the plane took off the male flight attendant came over the intercom to make announcements. He first spoke Vietnamese, naturally. In the middle of his spiel he said something odd. It basically sounded like this - "<Vietnamese, Vietnamese> Captain Randy <Vietnamese, Vietnamese>"
Lisa and I looked at each other, "Did he say Captain Randy?"
The flight attendant then spoke in English and it was the usual airline speech of welcoming you aboard and blah blah blah. And he did in fact welcome us on board on behalf of Captain Randy.
After we leveled out the intercom came on again and a very American sounding voice said "this is Captain Randy from the cockpit..." and did the usual pilot talk of telling us the weather at our destination and how long our flight would be. The weird thing was that what he said wasn't translated for the Vietnamese people on the plane. You know, the actual people whose country we were in.
So that was odd. We got to say goodbye to Captain Randy as we got off the plane, a typical looking pilot with the kind of mustache common among pilots, supermarket managers and members of the Village People.
We got off the plane in Hué about an hour and twenty minutes later. When we walked out to the cab it was raining. It was also, for the first time on this trip, not hot. In fact, it was even kind of chilly. It was also raining, which is something we heard it did a lot in Hué. Lisa even read something that referred to it as the "Seattle of Vietnam."
After about a 30 minute taxi ride we got to the Orchid Hotel and were met at the sidewalk by a bellhop with an umbrella.
If you are ever going to go to Hué you need to stay at the Orchid Hotel. This place is incredible. The staff was super nice to us and the hotel is really cute. They apologized to us over and over about the lock on our door, which was broke due to it being an electronic key-card lock with a dead battery. There was no real put-out to this, they just had to open the door for us every time we came back because they only had one manual key. But they kept apologizing for it anyway. This was not the original room we had reserved because we came a day earlier. They let us keep this one for both nights at the same rate even though this was a bigger and more expensive room, and we were the ones that needed the extra night at the last minute. We tried to tell them to go ahead and charge us the full price but they would have none of that.
And the room was fantastic! A "family room" with a big bed, a separate single bed (good to know for when we take our kid to Vietnam in a few years) and a cheap mini bar, topped off by a balcony over the street below.
It was late and we were slap-happy by this point, remember our day started with the canceled train in Saigon, when I discovered my favorite part of the room. In the closet were some damn sexy silk robes.
I never would have imagined it was possible to look creepier than Hue Hefner. But I think I proved that it is.
Next - The day in Hué
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