Good Morning Vietnam

:-) Was there really any other greeting choice?  Cheesy I realize, even predictable but there are very few times that it will ever be so applicable.  Hello from Ho Chi Minh City aka Saigon.  It's hot, it's humid and very vibrant.  So vibrant that the honking started at about 4 am this morning.

This is the view from my hotel window.

We arrived at 11:30 pm after 30ish hours of transit time. Needless to say I've seen nothing but the very hard bed and the view out my window. 

Today Peggy and I travel to Danang where the course will start on Monday.  Peggy is the BizCamp teacher and will be delivering most of the course. I'm there to get her from point A to Point B and to help the students with their business plans.  The getting from Point A to Point B seems to be the bigger challenge as I found at the airport. I'm so thankful that people from the Embassy give you helpful tips on what type of cab and how to make sure you don't get ripped off.   Between the illegal cab drivers, lax use of meters and language barriers, just getting to the hotel after being awake for 30 hours feels like an enormous accomplishment.  We waded past the crowd of illegal taxi drivers offering their services and made it to the real cabs only to have the first one walk away when he saw the hotel name - not sure what that was about.  The next driver loaded us in and off we went.  About 2 minutes of me asking how much and if the meter was running he stops the car and asks for money - 500,000 Dong (yep that's the currency name and I have a Bart Simpson moment every time I type it) instead of the 150,000 Dong I was told it should be.  Stops the car - middle of the road.  So I hand him 150,000 after a minute of discussion, he starts laughing and off we go.  Now from my limited experience with "saving face" the laughing is supposed to be a way to ease tension when you don't want to show anger.  To a foreigner though it sounds like "SUCKER". Anyway, after a few moments of thinking about what my next course of action could be I decide to just sit back and hope for the best. In the end, it turns out he was a very nice driver. Chatted as much as he could about motorcycles and Canada.  I think our little exchange was just him trying to find out if I had Dong (makes you laugh too doesn't it) and what size of bills because I don't think he had a lot of change and the laughing was really just to ease the tension. At least that's what I'm choosing to believe.

Off to the buffet now and then a little exploration of the area before we head back in a cab to the airport. See you in Danang.