Jan 26th 2012, Nha Trang, Peltsi

The story of five nights and four rooms in same small village. In short, that means we are in Vietnam. It's absolutely amazing how Vietnamese people are able to screw up most of the things related to accomodations.

For the first night we had booked a hotel with 3 beds in a private room for three nights. When we arrived to the hotel they said they don't receive anything from hostelworld and they don't have a room for us. After some slight 'disagreements' they organized a four-bed room for us for two nights and after that we'd need to switch to a 3-bed room. So far so good, almost. At some point we asked if we can stay longer in the smaller room and it was ok for them. As we already had some experiences about the locals we made sure the following day that it's ok to stay there and of course it wasn't. Would've cost almost double and we would've moved to again a different room so went hunting for another place to stay.

Sampo and Esa found a place for us and they booked the place for two nights. I was spending the day mostly in bed with some mild stomach problems. The morning we checked out of our hotel and went to this new hostel where they told us that they had received a reservation through internet which they had somehow 'missed' last time so one of us would need to sleep on the floor of the room as it would be overfull. At that point we knew that we didn't have much options as it's still the local holiday and all places are rather full so we decided to stay. Sampo lost the lottery and got the honour to sleep on the floor. Aaaand at some point the guy offered us another better room in a different hotel because he ”felt bad about us”. We took the offer and went to the fourth room for the last night.. Personally I believe they had again screwed up reservations and they had to find some place where to put us.

Esa and Sampo's diving instructor had mentioned that the Vietnamese really don't think of anything but themselves and never anything in the future. Sometimes it really seems like that. For example in the first hotel we stayed in in this village a fellow pissed off traveler from the States had actually himself called hostelworld and asked them to close the account of the hotel as the hotel managers didn't think of doing that themselves. It was as easy as one phone call and all their hostelworld problems disappeared. I wonder how long it would've taken for the hotel to think of this. They simply kept on telling everyone that they are sorry but they cannot give them the accomodation they had reserved because they don't receive..blahblahblah...

After Sampo's last writing not much has happened. But doing that much seems to be a lot of effort around here. We wake up, maybe do something and then oopsie daisy it's time for sleep. For example yesterday we spent some three hours at the beach and after that..umm..oh, yes, we walked to the other end of the town to see some not-so-touristic areas and then came home. Was tough.. Actually the beach part WAS rather rough. The waves at the beach were quite big and spending 15 minutes standing there felt like you had done lots of sports. But it was extremely fun :)



Ok today we actually did something. Or we didn't but a boat did. We had reserved a tour around some islands nearby. First visit was to an awesomely crappy aquarium. Second was snorkeling which might've been nice but the equipment leaked like hell. At least for my nose (perhaps my awesome travel mustache had something to do with it, though..). Third stop was for some local band concert onboard. They dug up makeshift drums and all, which was quite nice actually :) Fourth stop was to a private beach resort but we decided to skip that and stay on the boat as the beach was absolutely full of tourists as all the boat trips through different agencies have exactly the same schedule. Well that seems extremely clever. Overall the trip was nice, we did a bit of some swimming and I believe those boys got also a bit sunburn.







In general we were supposed to have lots of extra time in this town but in the end it feels like we have been extremely busy all the time. As Sampo suggested, maybe it is healthy to stay in one spot a bit longer now.

Tomorrow early morning we head out back to Saigon. Two nights there and after that it's time for separation again. Esa separates from our merry group as me and Sampo take a flight to Bangkok on Sunday and Esa takes a flight somewhere in Africa or Antarctica or wherever, I've stopped long time ago trying to follow where that guy goes. In Bangkok we have two nights and then it's early flight towards Europe again. I will have a short stopover in Helsinki before flying to Riga but Sampo obviously stays in Helsinki.

Our plan for the future days is rather simple. In Saigon we do nothing. Or if possible we get as far away from the city as possible for a day trip. In Bangkok we do lots of shopping to please our inner ladies. Or the ladies waiting in Europe. Straightforward enough.

P.S. Have you ever played this game called ”i-kieli” or roughly in English ”the i language”? You replace all vowels in everything you say with the vowel i. I used to play it with my sister when I was about 5 years old but now I remembered it again here and it was rather entertaining. Although I'm unsure if the best entertainment was the silly language itself or Sampo who hated the language. Esa the language master mastered this new language easily. Also I'm a bit unsure how well the game works in English for example – Finnish is perfectly phonetic so you always know how to pronounce whatever you see but I'd hate to try to think of how to pronounce some new i-words in English.

Oh, a perfect homework for you people from different countries. We are absolutely dying to know how i-language fits for different languages. Go experience on the streets and share your knowledge!