Night in Hanoi, Vietnam
I arrived in Hanoi around 8:30 last night, the start of 3-4 weeks or so in Vietnam. I’m really excited to be here. (mmm, Vietnamese food!)
When I arrived I booked a flight to Danang for the next morning (6:30am, ouch) to meet up with Roger and Marjorie in Hoi An. It doesn’t seem to possible to book Vietnam Airlines flights online, so I had been trying to book this flight for the last few days through a travel agency that never returned my calls or email. So now there was only one seat left, in business class (woohoo), for about $80 CAD.
I planned to take an overnight train if I couldn’t get a flight, so I didn’t have a hotel booked in advance. R+M recommended one before, so I asked a taxi driver if he knew where it was; he said yes (though he had no idea), and it would cost “twelve thousand dong” to get there, just under $1 CAD.
I didn’t know how far anything was, but prices here are supposed to be really cheap so that sounded reasonable. We drove about 30 minutes into town, with the driver’s buddy chatting to me all the way, telling me all about his family, pointing out various sights along the way, etc.
When we arrived at the hotel I gave the driver a 100k note expecting a bunch of change, and they said “no, twelve”, indicating they expected twelve 100k notes (1.2 million dong), not twelve thousand.
That’s quite a disconnect — I expected to pay 100 times less than they expected to receive! ($.86 CAD vs $86 CAD)
I asked one of the staff at the hotel what a reasonable fare was from the airport but after he exchanged a few words with the cab driver he was no help, saying the driver told him $18-20 USD (300k dong.)
Eventually I gave the driver 200k dong, $14 CAD. A taxi back to the airport the next morning booked through the hotel cost $10 USD; I expect with the taxi’s meter on it would be around $7-8 USD.
I went out for noodles last night but was very disappointed… nowhere near as tasty as the stuff I can get at home. Maybe just need to learn how to order. (tried to order a bun, rice noodle salad, but got something more like pho.) But at least it was only $.65 CAD…