Good Morning Vietnam!

Happy New Year everyone!

(I occasionally hit the enter button at the wrong time and the unfinished post goes out, then you get another, the finished version.)

I am at Bon Bien Resort at Mui Ne Beach in Vietnam. http://www.bonbienresort.com/ How I came to be here is a story of luck and good fortune.
I will start at the beginning. Yesterday, I signed on with a bus company called The Sinh Tourist for a segmented trip up the coast to Hanoi. The bus company is the only one with their own buses and were recommended by several people. If you pay for the whole thing up front you get a t-shirt. I hope that doesn't mean that at the end I will want to say "been there, done that, got the t-shirt"!
The first segment was the trip to Mui Ne Beach yesterday. In the Lonely Planet it suggests the trip will be about three hours, the bus company said probably five hours and in actual fact it took seven hours. I guess the lesson in that is never travel on New Years day in Vietnam. The traffic was beyond belief. We had 3 lanes going each way coming out of Ho Chi Minh. Two of those were being used by four (or more) wheeled traffic. The third lane and the shoulder was FULL of little motorbikes with at least two people on each. As you can imagine there was no free space to use for passing.
As I was watching the flow of the traffic it was like a big pail of motorbikes had been dumped on the road and they flowed into every available space between the other vehicles like a stream of water.
I didn't pre-book because I wanted to look the place over first, but that turned out to be a bad idea. The New Years crowd were all staying another day. I started walking from hotel to hotel but all were full. The locals told me to take a motorbike, the usual type of taxi but that didn't appeal to me with my two backpacks so I said I was getting a taxi. They warned me that taxi was expensive but I thought it would be relative to everything else. It isn't.

The hotel I had planned to stay at was down to one end of the beach so I went there first. Full! Then we stopped at a few places on the way back but all were full. I had left my big pack at the bus terminal so I stopped and grabbed it and we went down the beach the other way stopping in front of various hotels and the driver would yell and ask if there was a room. All full! I was beginning to worry about the cost of the cab. It was metered and started out at $10.00US. At some point the driver had closed it so I couldn't see and he wouldn't show me.
At the far end of the beach he stopped, pulled out my bags and said "You get room here". I said, Wait! How do you know they have a room?" He said something to them and they answered yes. He asked me to pay and when I said how much he laughed and asked "How much you think?" When I admitted to not being able to venture a guess he said $10.00 and laughed again. I paid him and tipped him a couple more bucks. We thanked each other and off he went.

Then I looked at the place, actually, a group of three establishments and not too seedy looking either. The staff were not behaving maturely though and yelling at people in the street. I was wondering if I should give the expensive resorts a try when it became apparent that they really didn't have a room. I think they must have thought that the driver and I were getting a room and when he left they didn't want to tie up a room with someone who was actually sleeping. OK, so now there I am at the edge of town stranded at the sex hotel. Bah! I got another taxi and this time I watched the meter. It started at 10 but was soon at 40. I said "Is that American dollars?" and it was. Well, they were right taxis are expensive. I saw a booking office for tours and also rooms and stopped there. At the last one I went to they had nothing but I was getting desperate. It least they had a phone. She called and said there was a room but I should wait for a return call and them someone would come down and help me. Only 5-10 minuets she said, but I am paying an expensive taxi. She had written down the name of the hotel and I asked the driver if he knew it. When he said yes we ran off to find it but it was also full. I got him to take me to another of those offices and paid him so I could wait for the whole booking process to take place. The meter was at $50.00. I asked if I could pay in dong and started counting out 1,000,000. This taxi was way shorter than the first one so now I know the first driver did me a huge favor. I hand the driver 500,000 dong which is $25 while I dig for some more, and he gives back 400,000. It is hard to know what info I am actually getting because I have finally hit a country where everyone doesn't speak English, but many still do.
So I tell the booking lady that I will consider a resort room for one night and she comes up with one for $80.00. I talk to the person on the other end and she offers a discount without being prompted of $10.00 Another helpful hand. When I get to the resort though they asked for my coupon and I just said that the payment slip was all they gave me and they let it go.

So you see, it really is safe for "innocent fools" to wander the world.

I have a bathtub here, the first one since Chaing Mai. The grounds are lovely with a pool and a great beach. After I had dinner at a nice German restaurant next door for less than $7.00US I wandered up the street a while and then went back to the room to soak in the tub. Heavenly! This morning I will try a dip and then have to move to my lower class, but still on the beach, digs.

This place is a great place to relax, reasonably quiet and cools off nice in the evening. I think I will stay here a few days.