Change of plans, and another change of plans

 Thursday November 16

Now in Da Nang. More hiccups than usual.

Woke at zero dark thirty and watched the dark clouds change into lead colored clouds from my  bed. I was moving on today, I wasn’t sure where, but I was tired of this nice room and great view. I’ll trade it for something else somewhere. Maybe catch a flight out if the roads are still a mess. Maybe go to Hanoi on the train if the flights are full. Maybe Hoi An if the road Gods allow. Time and I hope patience will tell.

Last breakfast and then peruse the inter web for what information I can gather. One of the posts yesterday had a thread to follow . Two of the replies were from the southbound Hanoi train and one from the northbound Hue train station. Both said they were stuck, the Hue poster said the train was at the sttion, but just sitting there. You could access your seat or cabin, but it wasn’t going anywhere. The one from Hanoi was in the middle of B.F. Vietnam and had been sitting there for hours and hours. That killed the train idea.

I couldn’t find Mr Van Duc, but did find Miss Thuy Van at the front desk she started calling around for a private car to Hoi An, and found one for a king’s ransom. Normally it is a Queen’s ransom, but future kidnappers knew a fat calf when they saw one. Normally 1.8 Million Ho’s, today’s special was a mere 2.8 Million Ho’s. I may be forced to rethink private car, but not quite ready to surrender to another horizontal bus.

Mr Van Duc “Psst”ed me over and said how about 1.7 Million Ho’s to Hoi An? A million Ho’s less? Well Ho-Ho-Ho Christmas just came early.

I packed as quick as a NASCAR pit crew and was in a taxi in an alley in a second. I kinda think the was on the sly for a better tip and more importantly that booking.com review mention.

The river was back in it’s banks this morning, and we only had to skirt one landslide on the way out of town. Once we hit the open road of a secondary highway it was smooth motoring until the driver Google Translated me that Hoi An was still flooded. I knew that their river had overflowed it’s banks, but had assumed it had subsided in the past 24 hours. Guess not. Maybe he just doesn’t want to go to Hoi An. I tried calling the hotel I had reservations in Hoi An and succeeded, but my English was so bad that neither of us could really understand the other.  So message app and that wasn’t much better, but the bottom line is, canceled and not charged.

New plan, Da Nang. They are open for business and have a big airport for making a quick escape. But first a short 30 minute rest stop in the middle of the highway, because of a landslide that had been cleared enough to let alternating single lanes of traffic through.  The price changed too. From 1.7 Ho’s for a 3+ hour ride to Hoi An to 1.6 Ho’s for a 2+ hour ride. What am I to say, we are already 2 landslides on the way out of town?

So reservations made on the phone in the car and in Da Nang in about 2.5 hours.

I go to check in and the woman says I have a reservation for next week, but nothing for today. Damn, I am a Bozo. Sometimes I expect hotels.com to just default to today’s date, and we all know what ASSUME does. So a quick cancellation and new reservation for the correct date and all set. Kill an hour writing this and my residence should be ready.