In Hue

It's now Sunday evening in Vietnam. We left Halifax Friday morning, with five of us from the university travelling together. My friend H. very kindly offered to share one of her Air Canada upgrade certificates with me for this trip, but alas - the flight from Toronto to Hong Kong was packed and we weren't able to upgrade to First Class after all. But we got exit row seats at least, which was good. The flight was as fine as 16 hours in a glorified tin can could possibly be, and I ploughed through four movies ("The Duchess", "Miracle at St. Anna", "Passchendaele" and the concert film "Kylie X 2008").

In Hong Kong, we did a little shopping at the airport - I was delighted to find they've opened a Muji outlet since I passed through last summer - before boarding our half-empty Cathay Pacific flight to Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). This was my first time passing through HCMC. The five of us split up into two separate cabs on arrival, with the others being taken on a merry ride by their driver and being charged US $17 for the three-kilometer journey to the hotel, which should have cost less than $2! Mind you, our taxi driver wasn't particularly scrupulous either - I gave him a VND 100,000 note($6) for the VND 30,000 ($1.75) fare, and I had to ask him to give me the change!

At least our hotel, the Parkroyal Saigon, was great. Their standard rooms were overbooked so I got a free upgrade to a deluxe room - yay! It was quite nice, with a big bathroom (separated from the bedroom by a glass wall) and the all-important wireless access. We reconvened downstairs in the lobby around 7.30 pm and had a drink at the bar, but not before I'd had a little stroll around and discovered the health centre was still open. They had staff on hand offering massage services and they were taking appointments well into the evening. When I found out that a half-hour aromatherapy massage only cost US $10, I made a booking in a flash! And it was exactly what I needed after such a very long flight. Within a minute or two of beginning the massage, the masseuse pronounced my back to be "like rock" so I was obviously pretty tense. The technique was a little unorthodox for us North Americans - my masseuse was a tiny young Vietnamese woman who hopped up on the table to dig her palms into my back, then straddled me at various times during the procedure. Eh, whatever. ;-) It was a good massage - they're obviously into the whole pressure-point thing and she spent a lot of time on a spot at the base of my skull and another at the base of the spine.

Needless to say, after all that I slept like a baby despite the 12-hour time difference, and didn't even wake up until after 6 am the following morning, which was great. We had a very good buffet breakfast, and then H. and I hopped in the hotel shuttle at 9 am. We were deposited in the city centre about 20 minutes away, and walked to the famed Ben Thanh Market. It's quite the place - very large - with a huge range of clothing, knicknacks and decorative items, as well as lots of prepared food, fresh fruit, veg, meat and seafood. We both bought some small embroidered bags to bring home as gifts, and might well have bought more except that some of the stallminders were very pushy (which is not something I've really experienced here before - normally sellers are fairly unobtrusive).

Afterwards we strolled down Le Loi street and stopped in at an upscale clothing store called Orchids. Absolutely gorgeous stuff for sale at not bad prices, and H. and I both tried on several outfits, but nothing fit! Very frustrating - but not surprising I guess, as the Asian body type is so different from my own.

Then it was time to return to the hotel in a cab, check out, and head to the airport for our connecting flight to Hue. We arrived at around 2.30 pm, to a full welcoming party of our friends from the university here. Then it was on to the Festival Hotel, where my boss P. and I stayed just last summer, during our last trip here. Very nice to be back, and very convenient to already know where everything is. H., P. and I went out a little earlier for dinner, to a small restaurant down the street - we had bowls of pho (beef noodle soup), spring rolls, and beer for less than US $3 per person.

So I'm settled in now, and ready to start work tomorrow morning. It's going to be a very intense week of meetings coming up, so I'm taking this evening to relax. Feeling more affected by jet lag today too and am very tired, so I'm aiming to try to stay awake until at least 10 pm tonight.