I'm going to China!!!

So after paying $56 to get express service for my visa to China, plus the $20 "it sucks to be American because everyone assumes that you have more money to pay for the EXACT same thing" tax, I'm going to China!! In Hue, in the bar, in the middle of the typhoon, it took me all of 10 seconds to agree to spend the first 10 days tagging along on Vicky's trip to China. It works out perfectly, really, because we're both sick and tired of Vietnam, wanting to get out of here, and I needed something to do until Darren flies into Bangkok on the 18th. So the plan is to do the Li river trip, then fly up to take a three day boat trip up the Yangtze before it's due to be flooded, then I'll fly back to Thailand from either Wuhan or Xian, depending on how far we get by that point. Whoo hoo!!!

And on a different topic - our bus trip from Hue to Hanoi SUCKED!!! It's an over night bus, so it leaves Hue at about 6:30 pm and gets into Hanoi at 8:30 am. First hitch is that the company we were booked with for the open ticket all the way from Saigon to Hanoi was over booked for this leg because so many people stayed the extra night in Hue to weather out the storm. (DON'T do these open ticket things if you ever come here. People say it's the best way to travel, but it's so miserable, corrupt, and a ridiculous waste of time and money that there's GOT to be a better way). So we had to pay an extra dollar for the privelege of being rebooked on a Vietnamese bus. All was okay except that we got on the tourist bus first, drove around for half an hour, got dropped back at the office to change to the Vietnamese bus, then drove around Hue for another half hour. For the first three hours or so after our dinner stop, we pulled off every 20 minutes for a half a dozen men to get off and piss on the side of the road. Why they couldn't just all go in the same stop is beyond me, really. The WORST of it is that Vicky was sitting next to a woman originally who kept falling asleep and elbowing her in the boob, so after dinner, she decided to move to an empty seat. Immediately around the corner, we stopped to pick up more people in this rat trip itty bitty town, so a nice-looking early 30s Vietnamese man with his young son moved to sit next to her. She fell asleep at some point and woke up to his open palm in the same place the woman's elbow had been before!!! She says that when she shifted to move away from him, and he dug in more, so she told him to F*&k off, and he put his little boy between them and left her alone. But the nerve of him!! He's lucky to still have all of his fingers intact, really.

Hanoi seems nice, though, so we're going to spend the next few days here before catching the train to China. First item on the agenda today is to find a real massage place. I think we all need it after that bus trip. Blech. Oh, and stop tweaking so much about the bird flu!!! ;)