I hate this town!

I hate this town! I took the bus this morning from Mai Chau to SOn La, under the premise that Son La was comperable in size to Mai Chau, small. I was droppd at the bus station after a gut-jolting 4 hour bus ride. Typically there is at least one motorbike driver who offers you a ride, if not an entire swarm of them. But here, not a single person ofered me a lift. That was my first clue that this place was different. I headed out of the station and began walking down the main road. The only foreigner around and not a single Hello!, not even from the kids. I was baffled. Everyone just stared, not in a discreet way, but bug eyed, mouth hanging open, gawking. People were taking photos of me with their cell phones. Where am I? I screamed in my head. I found a handful of hotels, each repeating the same behavior as the last. I'd walk in, they'd stare at me in silence. Room? I'd inquire. A puzzled look would cross their face, as they'd cal out to that token English speaker at the establishment. Room? I'd ask again, this time using hand motions to indicate that I was looking for a place to sleep. A big grin spreads across their faces, as they'd begin to laugh, no, no, no. This process went on for 2 hours. 2 hours of wandering aimlessly through the streets looking for anything that looked remotely like a guest house or hotel. Finally I found a place with rooms at a decent price, but because my passport is in Hanoi being processed with the Chinese embassy, I spent 15 minutes trying to explain why I couldn't show it to him. And God help you if you don't have your passport when trying to check-in to a hotel. He eventually settled for my California drivers license and my Vietnam exit car, but not before getting within 2 inches of my face and repeatedly saying, me, me, me. I shot him a confused look and half a smile.

Desperate for a beer, I dropped my things in the room and go out in search of a restaurant or roadside stand selling the infamous and widely available, Beer Hanoi. Figuring I'd find one almost instantly, I walked down the road I'd just come from in a rather chipper, good mood. But of course, nothing. There were shops selling any and everything, just not a beer. It was starting to get dark, so I turned around to ind my way back towards the hotel, hoping maybe they could point me in the right direction. Just before I got to the hotel, I saw just the sign I was looking for 'Pho, Com, Bia'--Noodles, Rice, Beer. Perfect!! The woman of course spoke no English, and through my mangled Vietnamese, I said Com Ga--rice and chicken--until I was blue in the face. Through a combination of hand gestures, English and Vietnamese, she finally figured out that I wanted to eat. Within minutes I had rice, chicken, greens, and cabbage soup, and that beer I was dying for. The food wasn't even good, but it would have to do, and the beer hit the spot. As I was getting up to pay, she comes over and holds up six fingers. Now the typical dinner in Vietnam shouldn't cost more than 30,000 dong, just shy of $2, so the six figures confused me. 6,000 dong would be much too cheap, and 60,000 dong, now that's out of the question. But she insisted, 60,000 dong! I've never spent so much on food. Until tonight, the most I'd ever spent on dinner for 40,000 dong and that was the fresh seafood special in Halong Bay, a justifiable splurge. I can't believe I was just suckered into spending my entire days food budget on one lousy meal. But what was I supposed to do? Now I have to figure out how to explain to the hotel manager that I want to go to Sapa tomorrow, ugh. This isn't going to be pretty.