What did you do last night? (This is How We Roll) - Page 172

pretty mediocre long weekend for me unfortunately

Was a 4 day weekend here (Thurs and Fri both holidays) and the plan had been for the gf and I to head up to the beach town of Nha Trang and do some diving. Unfortunately three hours before departure time, she had a mild motorbike skirmish that resulted in her needing 5 stitches between her 4th and 5th toes.

We decided that we would go up anyhow, although diving was a long shot, since she could barely put on shoes (let alone diving fins) and despite the fact that the salt water would have been good for it, 3 dives in a day may have been a bit much.

Anyhow, overnight bus, in we get, straight to the little local hotel where we were booked in and where my friends stayed last time. Backstory to this - over long weekends NT is notoriously hard to get hotel rooms, so we had booked a room for 4 people at extra cost as it was the last room they had. We get in, and are welcomed with the good news that they now had a smaller room available, and so we were happily downgraded.

Hobble around. Weather mediocre. Hang out at Guava Bar for a while. Dinner at Louisiane. Pretty early to bed though - the overnight bus had us both pretty wiped.

Friday comes, had planned on hanging out at the beach, but no can do with a stitched up foot. Looked at some of our other options, but nothing really appealed, and so ended up basically just bumming around Guava again. Went back to our hotel, and happened to ask how much our rate was for our downgraded room....exactly the fucking same as the bigger room apparently.

Arguments ensued.

The bottom line as far as they were concerned (underestimating both me and my gf's VNese is a dangerous thing) was that "it's a long weekend, everywhere is full, charge them high cos they can't go anywhere else".

This angers me.

In the end I marched around to a 4 star place on the waterfront which was 4x more expensive (but happens to be the sister hotel of a client), talk to the manager, and get us put in a huge suite with a large balcony overlooking the bay for a very attractive rate. Despite the extra cost, we were pretty damn pleased. Back to first hotel, gather bags, leave, dump key and one night's (overcharged) room fee on the counter, and check ourselves in. Great great room.

Dinner at this street place recommended by friends called Lac Canh - which was filthy but excellent - then basically retired to our room and our balcony for the night.

Saturday - friends from Saigon were doing reggae day at Guava. Unfortunately it was raining pretty heavily all day, but still, joined for the BBQ lunch, DJs all day, so we went by there. Hung out for a few hours, got bored, back to hotel for a nap. Dinner at the Sailing Club, where we booked the best seats in the house for dinner, leaving us with the best seats in the house for the DJ and party that followed. Stayed there for a couple of hours, then back to Guava where we stumbled across a few other old friends and made ourselves a few new friends too. Around 2 our friends wanted to go back to Sailing Club, but we slipped away back to the hotel.

Had wanted to dive Sunday as the toes had had a few recovery days by then, but thought better of it given the crappy weather on Saturday - feared that visibility would be awful and it would just be a waste of money...ended up meeting a friend for lunch, hanging out for a while there. Other friends wandered in, having just been diving, told us that it was great and the visibility was excellent. Cursed selves. Ate more. Went for a hairwash/face massage thing. Buffet dinner in the hotel (was really good actually), then the overnight bus back to Saigon.

Pretty crappy time considering we had had such high hopes for the weekend, but oh well, can't win em all I suppose.