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Other entries in Hội An (1)

nothing to do

well, I can confirm that viet nam busses are NOT like s american buses. spent the first 1.5 hrs JUST driving around the city picking up passengers (bus companies sell tickets and pick you up from the hotel. seems like a nice service until you realized they do this for every passenger. would be so much easier for us to just all show up in one location, but noooooo.....stupid like puppies I tell ya.).

by the time they pick me up, most seats were occupied. managed to find an empty one, but it had a purse, 2 sandwiches and a water bottle.... unless this is a ditzy blond who got off then missed the bus (like me), this will probably not be good.  3 hotel stops later, an israeli guy takes the other seat. I warn him of our situation. he says "yes, but there's nothing else". we're so gonna get screwed, I just know it. until then, he's big and takes up a lot of space - I regret not taking one of the other seats with a small asian woman.

finally the purse owner and husband show up. this is it, I knew it. I start to collect my things. israeli guy doesn't move. much yelling in vietnamese happens between driver and this couple. next thing I know, they collect THEIR things and head to the back. now I'm glad for israeli guy and his refusal to move. we get to stay put. and I know this all sounds mean, but aspects of asian culture are very selfish. I'm slowly picking some of this up.

rest of the ride was also shit. bus driver honked the horn all night long. there are no toilets on the bus so we stoped every 2 hours - as in JUST when I sort-of fall asleep, it was too cold (ironic), and too smelly. but at least I had a seat. by the time we left nha trang, some people were in the aisle sitting on little plastic buckets. for 12 hours....

so I get to hoi an feeling bitter, selfish, hot, cranky - not exactly my finest hour. couldn't sleep so wandered the city - only to be hounded by so many shop owners in more blistering heat. man I was is a pissy mood. finally bought a water, that helped. wandered into a scuba shop - a guy was siesta-ing. didn't want to wake him, but just as I was leaving, he heard me. and that's how I met lodovico - italian expat living in hoi an the past 6 years. we hit it off immediately!

more on it all later, but he drove me around on his moto, we had fish hot pot, saw the beach, talked about scuba on the island, and we got to talking about painting a mural in his scuba shop. so suddenly, it's all excellent in hoi an!

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