Leaving Da Nang was the start of our long journey back to Australia. I always hate goodbyes, it just reinforces the normality to come. I would love to be an eternal traveller, but that's not going to happen, so as long as I can take a couple of holiday's a year, I am happy. With Taiwan on the agenda in seven months time, I am content to settle down and do some hard graft.
The short flight from Da Nang was once again pretty turbulent. All I can put it down to, is the smaller plane. Obviously, the smaller the aircraft, the more you feel the rocking motion. Thankfully, it only took an hour, and we were on the ground before we knew it.
I had arranged a 'complimentary' pick up at the terminal, in Ho Chi Minh City, after our flight from Da Nang, to take us to our last hotel of the trip. This was called, aptly enough, 'The Airport Hotel.' I had literally typed in 'Airport Hotel Saigon,' in my Expedia app, and this place came up first, as one would expect.
After twenty minutes waiting at the meeting point, I phoned the hotel, to find out where our transfer was — this should have been a warning of things to come. I already had a feeling this last stay wasn't going to end well. The gentleman on the end of the phone, said the car was on the way, and to just hold tight. Sure enough, after forty minutes, the car arrived, and we were off to the hotel.
It took about five minutes to get to our hotel, and when I got to the desk to check in, I was astonished to be charged 240,000 VND or $15.00 AUD for the so called 'complimentary' ride. Needless to say I wasn't happy, but I was at the end of my trip, and just wanted to leave on a high point, so once again just let it flow over me.
We were shown to room 605 and left to settle in. To be honest, the room looked dated and tired and smelt a bit musty. I walked over to the window and opened the curtains. To my horror there was a door wide open, that went directly onto one of those old rickety metal fire escapes, like the ones you find at the side of New York skyscrapers. Now I had a lot of important stuff in my case and wanted it closed.
Well we tried and tried, but the door wouldn't even shut, let alone lock, and after half an hour I was fuming. Angry, I stormed down to the desk and demanded something was done. A young lad came back up to our room with me, but could not do anything himself, and arranged for us to be moved to room 305. We grabbed our stuff and made our way down in the lift to the third floor.
This time I checked the fire escape door, and it was bolted tight. However, once the member of staff left, I realised there was no lock in the door, so in the event of a fire we would be either dead, or severely injured from jumping from a third floor window. At that point, I just thought, what the hell — I had given up caring.
The room was filthy, dusty, and poorly maintained. There was water leaking though a pipe in the bathroom, and the bathroom door had a rather large crack above it. It wasn't until I tried to close the door, that I realised why — obviously someone had tried to close the door in the past without success, and plaster was falling off from around the frame. Now, usually this wouldn't bother me, but I had discovered there was no bathroom light switch. The only way you could block the light out at night was to either close the door, which was impossible, or remove the room's key card from the slot. In the end, there was no choice, we both needed sleep, without the bathroom light illuminating the bedroom!
By removing the card, we had no electricity to the room, so I couldn't charge my mobile devices and most importantly, we had no aircon all night in 38 degree heat. This was the worst nights sleep I have had on holiday, yet the bed itself was perfectly acceptable. By 9pm, after a bite to eat out, we were both exhausted, so aircon or not we just had to sleep, even if it was only for a short time.
