halong city - day 1

Let me just shout this out.. i HATE halong city!!



Me. Alvin and Joanna basically stayed another day in halong city to visit a 5 star hotel and its casino for some business matter.. we accompanied alvin at least while having a look at halong city ourselves.. so after alighting from the junk, we headed to the restaurant for lunch.. had interesting conversation with a hong kong couple and the rest of the guest from our junk too.. it was SO hot and the electricity broke half way that basically noone had any appetite to eat..



Headed off to the hotel in a cab not knowing where it was.. The driver told us it will cost 20000 dong.. since we had no idea where it was we tot it was reasonable.. guess wat?? it is not!! it is just walking distance away la celaka.. and bad enough the meter only say 15000 dong but the guy insisted we pay 20000 dong. cheater sia!



The hotel is really cool! its very 'genting'ish where they try to equip the hotel with more facilities and entertainment hence the casino.. the rooms are beautiful!! and as life goes , BLOODY ex! will make enough money one day to let my parents stay there! but really the hotel is expanding damn fast and its really interesting to see.. we visited the casino (first time in casino is in vietnam and not genting.. unique la my 'casino' experience) and the other facilities.. and den we went to find ourselves a guest room..


The cab thing is just a prelude to the shitty stuff we encountered... it got worse after our visit to the hotel.. we checked into this guest house which is well .. not tat spectacular.. our room appear clean ( i think) and the aircon is working (though leaking water) .. but its really expensive! ( 25 USD for dat shitty room!!) after taking some rest, we headed to the beach.. which is not really swim inducing if you get my drift.. but the sea breeze is pretty relaxing if u dun mind da smell.. so after a few hours of just chatting away , 3 of us decided to have dinner.. but guess wat, we dunno enough vietnamese to order ! so we went back to the hotel to get our bible on vietnam trying to figure some stuff out.. we tot tat if we asked the ppl at the front desk they would be able to help us out. asked this woman. she said they have a restaurant at the guest house. we said its ok we wanna try stuff outside.. her face totally changed black and told us.. i dunno i dunno.. bitch~! and as we were heading out, she yelled at us, passport passport..

wat da hell? we asked her for wat. and with her limited english she could not explain.. somethign bout police shit.. we said no. but she would not allow us to leave.. there were 2 guys from netherlands walking in so we asked them if their passports were taken. They said yes, so we decided ok we will pass them our passports provided they return it to us at 9. I was super pissed off.. i mean is this how u speak to customers? what happen to hospitality? no wonder dey will be stuck there forever ! ugh disgusting

again attempting to have some seafood dinner, we ventured outside again. i personally feel like we were entering a sea of vultures waiting to pick on us. so we decided on a place.. they had a menu with chinese translations. so we ordered while asking the price as we go to be save. argh still with such caution still kena tipu. we had a plate of small shrimps not too big not too fresh too i think for 90000 dong.. dats close to 24 ringgit la wat da hell.. and we had this barbequed dried sotong thing dat was so tough joanna couldn't even swallow it down.. really small too..

after the overpriced and underdelivered dinner, we headed to the night market.. the whole night of kena cheated totally dampened my spirit to even look around.. we went into a super market where the price was fixed , and had some forzen yogurt and icecream to calm ourselves down. and den we headed back to get our passports.. and guess wat.. they were late.. and they at first din wanna return our passports until we checked out.. we insisted and paid them so dat we could get our passports back. damn kan jeong and irritating..

den we chilled at some cafe.. feeling just tired.. esp of being cheated.. sien