Vietnam Trip (Part 2)

I kinda feel like after the last 24 hours spent here in Hue I should recant some of the things I wrote yesterday about Vietnam...

Hue has turned out to be a delightful city, and aside from the incessant honking (yes, I still stand by that) and the very in-your-face-walking-next-to-you-for-five-minutes-after-you've-already-said-no-twenty-times bicyclye taxis, this really has been a pleasant experience.

 We met a Vietnamese guy on the bus yesterday who happened to know Thai so Sone was able to talk to him and then he called a taxi for us and that taxi driver brought us to a random hotel that has turned out to be a great little place.  We can walk pretty much anywhere within 15 minutes.

This morning we went to a little shop and got 2 sandwiches and two types of pastries for 25,000 dong. Sounds pricey, doesn't it? Actually, that's a whopping $1.25!  That totally beats even Lao prices.  Had delicious pizza for lunch (that was, unfortunately, not $1.25, but still very reasonable!). We ended up coming to Hue during their city festival and that has been a huge treat. We saw a show with singing and dancing tonight by Thai Issan people (Issan are actually Lao, but they moved to Thailand years ago for one reason or another. But their dialect of Thai is very similar to Lao), so a lot of the songs and styles of dance were really familiar to Sone.

(I so wish I had remembered the cord to connect my camera with my laptop right now so I could upload a video of one of the coolest dances...)

Oh, another mini adventure/funny thing from today - we went on a hunt for tampons in Hue.  I read online that you can find them at mini marts and such.  We searched everywhere, even resorting to pulling out the only one I have with me in order to see if they actually sold them. It ended up being a wild goose chase and we didn't find anything of the sort. Though we did end up at a great market with some amazing deals.

If you have  never bargained hard before, this is how it goes:

1. You ask, How much is this?
2. They give you a price: ____________
3. You make a face and say, Oh, so expensive
4. They say, ok how much you want (sometimes this is said in body language...or in the case when I was buying my brassiere, we wrote the prices on our hands!)
5. You name a price lower than you actually are willing to pay - because they always always counter with a higher price
6. They make a face as if to say, you are disrespecting all the goods in my store and then make a counter offer (often this is the price you wanted before so you can accept).

Usually the process ends here in Laos - they don't bargain that much because their prices don't start that high. But here in Vietnam they bargain hard! And you can often get the item for 50-70% of the original price. I bought a pair of sunglasses today and walked away twice before they agreed to the price. I still think they end up with a good deal on their end though because they always seem eager to sell.

Tomorrow we're heading to Da Nang beach - we're going to take the train which should be fun and I heard the train offers a great view of the coast.  It's also Sone's first time on a train so she's really excited. I so wish that our friend Koy would've been able to come with us too. It's so fun to see my friends enjoy new experiences. Two days at the beach and then headed back on the bus on Sunday night.