It's Not So Bad When You Close Your Eyes...

With these words, Jaime wearily drifted off to sleep in the clothes she'd been wearing for over 24 hours. Thus ended our nightmarish trip from Chiang Mai to Hanoi through Bangkok. The trip started off on a slight downer, as our flight from CM was slightly delayed. We felt lucky, however, as many flights out of CM were being cancelled due to the weather/air issues. Visibility index: ZERO. Web's lung capacity by this point: 5% of pre-trip baseline.

We suffered through a very bumpy ride into BKK, and our connecting flight was delayed by two hours. After landing in Hanoi following another very turbulent flight, we made it through customs and were relieved to be on the ground. Unfortunately, the driver who was supposed to take us to our hotel was nowhere to be found. It was 11 PM (we were supposed to land at 7), we had no money, no driver, no phone... and there wasn't an English speaking person in sight. Yikes.

After finding a Mandarin-speaking Vietnamese tour guy to help us (go figure!), we were booked into a "very good" hotel after being told all 5, 4 and 3 star hotels in Hanoi were sold out. We hopped in a cab, rode for almost an hour, and stopped off in front of our hotel... or so we thought. The manager stepped out to inform us that he had no rooms available, but was happy to bring us to his "friend's" hotel. Uh oh. We trekked through the empty streets of the Old Quarter behind him and his friend, and stopped off in front of a dark, empty "hotel". To say it was a ZERO star hotel would be generous.

Here's pics:

As you can see, this hotel was awesome. Here's just how awesome:

- We had an open "window" that was 1/4 covered with cardboard (above pic)

- No AC

- Carpets worn down to the wood underneath

- A used mattress sitting in the " main lobby"

- No water coming out of the sink, toilet or showerhead

- The TV didn't work

- Free roommate (a lizard hanging out on the wall... probably came in through the "window")

- Towels that I wouldn't use to wash our floor (dirty, stinky and threadbare)

- A manager more interested in playing World of Warcraft than helping us!

... all this, and we had the Penthouse unit! Everything in the hotel was damp because of the humidity here. We ended up sleeping on top of the comforter--we added extra layers of long sleeved clothing on top to avoid touching our moist sheets! Web even slept in the socks that he wore the entire day. The amazing thing is we both slept like babies... 11 hours straight!