Instead of travelling to Ninh Binh as we had planned after the rains of Hue sent us running as quickly as possible...we decided to take a mini bus to a place called Ha Tinh. What is there you might ask? Not much that is oriented to tourists. Perhaps that is why we chose it. After Hoi An where every 2 steps someone is pulling at your arm and saying "my friend, come to my shop'...it would be a nice change of pace. Our books said there were a couple of nice beaches, so we said why hell not.
The bus was filled with Vietnamese and dropped us off in the middle of nowhere, where no one spoke English and all spoke to us like we should completely understand Vietnamese. After getting completely taken to the cleaners by some moto drivers, we got to a hotel and checked in. Ate some lunch and went out exploring the streets. Watching the faces of the locals as we walked past was worth the stop in Ha Tinh on its own. First they would register shock, perhaps followed by disbelief. They would completely stop what they were doing, call their friends over to stare at us. The children would scream hello and then when we responded they would bend over in laughter. It was quite fun actually.
This man came up to our friend Lee, rubbed the blonde hair on his arms, patted his stomach and then proceeded to lift him up. For no apparent reason and offering no explanation at all for his actions. Ha.
We met some lovely guys at the hotel we were at...a bunch of Americans from the army, navy, etc who are here in Vietnam searching for the soldiers that have been missing since the war. Pretty fascinating sitting and talking with them about their jobs and what they do in a day.
Today we travelled onwards to Ninh Binh. Getting here was a little bit of a challenge. It included standing on the side of the road and trying to flag down a bus headed in our direction. After about 30 minutes and several failed attempts (the entire time we had a group of people yelling at us and pointing...I am sure trying to be helpful but we had no idea what they were saying). In the end it turned out we had to be outside town limits to flag down a bus. So in a taxi we got, the driver stayed with us and helped flag down a local bus headed in our direction. The guy working on the bus (we nicknamed Hitler for his charming personality) crammed Lee and I into the back row of the bus where the bench seat wasn't even attached to the floor of the bus and slid around every time he touched the brakes.
Deb had an admirer on the bus. An old man (76 yrs old) came down the aisle to chat her up, told her she was beautiful and then got yelled at by Hitler and promptly returned to his seat. We got dumped off on the side of the road, not entirely certain where we were. Made some friends on the bus who were teaching us the correct pronunciation of names of places in Vietnam and seemed thrilled with the Canadian pins we left them with. All in all...a long day but a good day.
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