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The morning of 12th October I tried to book my flight home while Kelly and Kim booked our boat from Kat Ba to Halong City back on the mainland.
I found the flight I wanted but wasn't able to book it because it is absolutely 100% illegal for anybody to do anything with ease in the country of Vietnam. I asked the man in the Internet cafe if he could change Skype settings from Vietnamese to English so I could skype the travel company and after about 1 minute of just clicking the mouse he looked at me and said 'no, just Vietnam'. Of course. Just Vietnam.
I took a similar amount of time to take it upon myself to learn the Vietnamese language and conveniently found the 'settings' --> 'language' button that he had not been able to find... in his native tongue. His rude, unhelpful Vietnamese tongue. ANYWAY after I had discovered my language talents I tried to Skype the travel company.
'Oh how naive of you Sophie!' Of course I couldn't pay for Skype credit because it was telling me that apparently the Internet connection I'd been using for the past 30 minutes didn't actually exist. Hooray.
Breathe, count to 10 and 'contact us'. I composed a message and clicked submit only to be told in not so many words that today was not my day. I carefully reconstructed the message, this time being careful only to include letters, numbers and punctuation- god only knows what I had previously been using. Not the Internet connection according to Skype. Whatever it was, it did not defeat me and I now await a reply stating that they're 'Sorry, this flight is fully booked'.
Onwards and upwards. We paid 100000 dong for our taxi to get to the harbour (one of few cars on the island it would seem, and one that has an inability to stay on its side of the road for more time that absolutely necessary, infact some times when it was necessary) and were told that it would be 40000 for the ticket once we got there.
We arrived in the waiting area 1 hour before due departure and asked to buy a ticket being told '4', harshly. We knew the boat was at 4 but wanted to purchase the 40000 dong ticket. They understood enough English to charge me to use the toilet and let us buy Oreos but apparently our request to buy a ferry ticket... at the ferry terminal... where we were waiting for the ferry... With our 40000 dong... conveniently the very same amount as a ferry ticket, was misunderstood. Must have been lost in translation I guess. NOT.
They took so much pleasure in seeing us run back to the ticket desk and ask again what we had asked a million times- if we could buy a ticket- and this time they understood, which was very lucky because as we had the enough time to run for the ferry as it was sounding its horn and running away.
I have never experienced such rude and spiteful people!!!!!
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