We took advantage of our hotel’s rooftop breakfast again, and then spent some leisure time in our room before the taxi came to pick us up for the trip back to Hue airport. The airport was pretty quiet. It was easy to find the right line because there was only one – maybe just one flight for the day. We sat around still trying to digest all the food and then we caught a bus out to the airplane and grabbed some seats.
Since it was a short trip we just got a little snack pack, and this time there were little sandwiches in our snack boxes. I couldn’t even comprehend eating one at this point, so I gave it to the rather large guy sitting in the same row as us. He was very happy and tore into like a starving bear.
Before we knew it we arrived in Hanoi, and we got off the place, grabbed our luggage, and headed out into the main terminal.
We did not arrange a car with our next hotel because it was freakishly expensive (why pay $40 US when we were able to make a deal for $10 last time?) so we decided to go the tricky route and negotiate a deal with the taxi drivers. Kuniko suggested we catch one from the departure level upstairs – those guys might be more inclined to take us back to the city because they just came from there. They also weren’t so organized – the arrivals level was surrounded with drivers waiting to screw you over. We wanted to be careful – my guidebook had dedicated three pages to how Hanoi taxi drivers will try to rip you off.
So we were not completely clueless when we talked with a guy up on the departures level. He was just walking by and asked us if we needed a cab, and so we negotiated a ride for $12 back to Hanoi, and he led us to a taxi. This is where things got weird. He wasn’t actually the driver, there was a driver and our guy sat in the passenger seat. The driver didn’t speak English – he was quiet the whole time. Right away I paid the $12 to the passenger guy, and he took the money and said thanks.
Once we were underway the passenger guy asked us if we had been to Hanoi before (and we lied and said it was our third time) and told us that he knew some really cheap hotels in town. The last thing we wanted to do was tell him that we were staying at the Sofitel (the most expensive hotel in town) so we told him we were going to meet a friend at the post office (which was down the street from the Sofitel). That threw him off – the usual tactic is to tell us that our hotel is closed or full, and to try to get us to go to another one. Sorry, buddy.
Next he told us that we had to pay a toll at the exit of the airport. This was our third time through this road, and before our driver had paid the toll. So we just refused. That threw him as well. He thought about it for a while, and then asked us to pay again (10,000 dong – about 70 cents). We refused again, and the car started to pull over to some old ladies selling tickets. This time the guy said that it was 10,000 dong each, and we just shook our heads. Something shady was going on, and it seemed best just to do everything slow and deliberately, so that the pressure would be on the driver and our “friend”. Cars started honking behind us, and our guys were starting to stress, so I handed over just 10,000 dong, and the driver paid some amount of money, and they let us through. The passenger at that point said that the driver would take us from there, and he jumped out and said goodbye, offering his hand. I didn’t shake it and we took off. It’s amazing what people will do just to make a little bit of money.
So we were a little pissed on the ride back, but finally we made it into town and the driver pulled up in front of the post office. We got our luggage out of the back, and said thanks, pulling our luggage behind. Then the driver is shocked – where’s the money? He’s making motions like we didn’t pay him, and he’s holding out his hand. And it all becomes clear. Either he’s not buddies with the passenger guy and he got screwed, or he is buddies with the passenger guy and he’s trying to double his fare. Either way, there was no way in hell we were going to pay. I explained that I paid his friend (using hand motions) and Kuniko looked up the Vietnamese word for “police” in her guidebook, motioning that we should all go have a chat. He didn’t want to go to the police, so after about ten minutes there was no point in staying so we left. What a hassle.
So from there we walked a block with our suitcase and checked into our next hotel – the Sofitel Metropole. I had made a reservation here as an anniversary gift for Kuniko, and I had figured ahead of time that we would need some relaxation in a nice hotel before heading home. The place is pretty historic, and our room was beautiful. Definitely the nicest hotel I’ve ever stayed in. Widescreen TV, huge comfortable bed, beautiful bathroom and a fully functioning toilet.
We lounged around the room, and after we had settled in we walked around the hotel a little bit to see what it was like. Everyone was really friendly, and it had the feeling that anything you could possibly want they could provide within a few minutes.
One little social observation – I noticed that the foreigners staying at this hotel were not so friendly. They were kind of caught up in their own status it seemed to me. A couple was having their picture taken getting out of a black BMW at the entrance – and the snooty feel was even stronger in the Gucci brand shops attached to the hotel. It was probably the only place in Hanoi that had real Gucci products.
But if you can let all of that kind of stuff go by and just enjoy the comfort of the place and the good service of the staff, then you could have a good time. And we did.
We waited as long as we could to get up an appetite, and then made a long walk to the north of town to an upscale buffet restaurant called “Brothers”. The buffet was nice because we could choose our own items without having to worry about whether we could read a menu or not. I liked everything I ate there, although everything did seem a little tamed – made safe for the tourists. The atmosphere was nice, too. We ate in the outdoor courtyard under a roof of palm trees. The desserts was where Brothers really shined, though. We hadn’t ordered much for dessert besides che, so it was nice to try some other traditional Vietnamese sweets.
On the way back to our hotel we did a little shopping at a grocery store we found, and then a short walk around the lake before coming back to our hotel room. They had turned down the covers, left chocolates on our pillow, and also left a big plate of fresh fruit and a smaller plate of chocolates for us as well. Nice service. When we finally climbed into bed I realized it was the most comfortable bed ever. We had come a long way from the Prince Hotel 1 in the old quarter.
