Yet another hotel lobby negotiation...

Short word on the visa...nothing. On to other things...

We rescheduled our flight for December 23rd. We really hope that we're able to use those reservations. It was good that we were able to get seats during the very busy season.

Per the title of this blog entry, I spent another hour in our hotel lobby in negotiations with a travel agent (and others) here. A little background...we came to Hanoi three weeks ago, and our adoption agency's representative in Hanoi didn't know that we were coming when we did until 2-3 days before we got here (the original plan was for us to stay in Saigon longer). It is really busy in Hanoi right now and very difficult to get hotels, so our representative was forced to use a travel agent to find accommodations for us. The use of this travel agent has resulted in nothing but poor communication and misunderstandings. When Barbie's family changed rooms during their stay, the travel agent expected them to pay for 2 rooms instead of the 1 that they were using for their stay. We talked our way through that only to have the price raised for them by $15 per night at the point that they were ready to check out. That was finally resolved after much hand-wringing and consternation.

Today the travel agent came to settle accounts with us. The room here at the hotel was booked through the travel agent through December 16 (we'll stay here after that, but we will book directly with the hotel to simplify matters). All along I have been told $60/night. When the travel agent came today the charge was $70 per night! When we checked in we requested a room with two double beds and an extra bed (rollaway). We were told that the room would be $60 and an extra bed would be $10. When we went up to the room, there were simply two beds (one almost queen size and the other not quite double size). I asked where the extra bed was and the travel agent said, "there's no room for an extra bed in this room." It was my assumption that meant that we did not have an extra bed, and thus we shouldn't pay for it. The travel agent thought something that I still don't understand (maybe something like, this guy looks kind of stupid.) Well, perhaps I am stupid, but that's a different subject.

So after a bunch of cell phone calls to people, 7 people in negotiation (2 from travel agency 3 from hotel, my agency rep, and myself) I ended up paying the guy $60 per night. The things stated during our conversation included the following statements from the travel agent: "we don't need a written contract in Vietnam because verbal contracts are binding", "we have a written contract, but I don't have it right now", "Next time I will get it in writing", "I never saw your room when you checked in", "Of course I checked out your room when you checked in", and my personal favorite, "I don't think he's lying--he just talks fast" (said by the travel agency director of his employee). I remember the following question coming out of my mouth, "Is there a branch of the police that deals with crimes against tourists?"

After the travel agent took his money and left the hotel manager stated that he wanted me to book the rest of the stay directly with him at a discount. I asked him how much and he said, "Maybe $10 cheaper". If I had learned anything of the past few weeks I would have asked, "do you mean $50 per night and can I get that in writing?" However, negotiating in a different culture is a great experience, so maybe I should leave things a little vague for now.

Other than that, the day was mostly low key. I went with our adoption agency rep (Mr. Hien) to the airline office to change tickets. I really love the coffee here and have purchased a couple of Vietnamese coffee-making apparatuses. I was asking Mr. Hien what the best coffee to use was for Vietnamese coffee. He said without hesitation, "Dragon Coffee, I'll take you on my motor bike". So I took yet another trip on a Vietnamese motor scooter to go on a coffee run. Mr. Hien seemed to struggle a bit with balance (I don't think it has anything to do with me outweighing him by 120 lbs or so), but we made it there and back alright. I was able to get 2.2 kilos (almost 5 lbs) of Dragon Coffee for about $10. I haven't quite got the technique down for making the coffee correctly, though. I will work on it with Mr. Hien. When you're over after we get back, ask me to make you a shot!

It's 9:20 pm here and Barbie and the kids are sleeping upstairs. It was a rough night with Julia as she was upset about something. Everyone seemed to go to sleep easily tonight. This weekend we plan on getting back in the tourist swing. Tomorrow we plan to visit some of the Ho Chi Minh sites (the man, not the city) and Sunday we may go back to this incredibly cheap place to buy really cool ceramics.

For those of you still interested in following the blog, I appreciate it. The news isn't so interesting, new, or cool these days. We still appreciate the idea that we have family and friends who care enough to be interested. It really does mean a lot to us.

Many people have noted that they have tried to post comments unsuccessfully. We really do like hearing from folks, so if you want to email barbie or me, that works, too.

See ya later (but hopefully not too much later),

Doug