Pack It In, Pack It Out: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

This is going to be another long one. A lot of things have happened in the past week or so. I'd like to end on a positive note, so I'll start with the ugly.
First off, Hoi An was more than just a shopping center. In fact, I ended up staying about five days. I did buy some custom made things, but for the most part I just wandered about. Many cities or towns look the same here, but Hoi An has a nice older architecture to it. The city comes alive along the river at night with music, lanterns floating in the river, and cheap beer. There isn't too many late night bars though, so don't go looking for that scene. There is one nightclub on the beach (4k out of the town) which is cool cause you can hangout on the beach. However, at this beach bar, I left the bar with only one flop. Someone decided to take one of my flops while I was on the beach. And no, I didn't lose it. I searched the entire place over for it and missed the last bus back to town. I even went back the next day to do a more sober and thorough search. Not only had the staff not found it, but I turned that place upside down. Anyway, so there were a few moto-taxis waiting to take people that missed the bus back, but they were charging outrageous prices. I had about $2 left on me, which should have been plenty for the ride, but they wanted 5, so I told them to fuck off and started walking. I must have been a curious sight; whitey, walking back in the wee hours, carrying one flop. I managed to hitch a ride back with a guy who spoke no English, but we managed to get to my hostel without much confusion. Losing the flop wasn't too big a deal because I had some custom flops made for me for $17 and they are sweet.
Speaking of my hostel, if you are in Hoi An get a hotel room instead. It was $5 for the hostel, but it was kinda shitty. A hotel would have been $10. There isn't too many places here that have a place to lock up your stuff. Most of the people here run on the honour system, you can leave your shit out and nobody fucks with it. Well, at least not the Vietnamese. The people you have to worry about are other travelers. I let my guard down at this hostel and got robbed by an English dude in my room. The room was a triple and the other person was a girl from Yakima, who works on boats. We got along pretty well since my dad used to be a boat builder and I grew up on the water. She worked on the Lady Washington in Seattle, so she knew the area well. I'm a pretty good judge of character and I can't see her robbing me, nor the staff - the whole pride thing and they have too much to lose. So, I'm about 90% sure it was the English dude. He stole about $250 (I'll explain why I had that much in a minute), my solar charger, and my hair trimmer (which adds to why I think it was him). I actually had more cash than that, but I have it split into different places in my luggage. Why did I have that much? Two reasons. One, I had around $100 in US dollars to use for an emergency. Two, I have been trying to book a flight from Bangkok to Istanbul and stopped into a couple travel agencies to see if I could get a deal. It's tough in SE Asia cause most of the flights have prices regulated by government. I found a place that quoted me $250, which is a phenomenal price. Naturally, they didn't take credit card, so I had to go get that out in cash. When I returned, she told me they quoted from somewhere in Vietnam to Bangkok, not the journey I wanted. So now I had $250. I did split it up, putting about $100 in Dong in with the emergency money (I also had a $50 gift card that Ivy's parents gave me as a present before I left, totalling around $250 all together). I didn't realize that I had been robbed until I got to Ha Long bay. At least on a positive note, I can laugh a little at the fucker; while he did get the solar charger, he didn't get any of the accessories which were way too buried to find and the charger is useless without the accessories. He probably could order them over the internet, but still...
The next shitty thing, that was again mostly my fault, was that I got ripped off on my Ha Long bay trip.
TIP: book a tour out of Hanoi or on Cat Ba Island. A one night is probably the best way to go cause Cat Ba Island is not that nice and if you do a two night tour you spend the second night there. You can find ferries to Cat Ba Island in Ha Long city for super cheap, but I didn't know that ahead of time. Also, the tours you can buy out of the island are more unique and probably go to less touristy places. You can also hop to and from a couple islands from there.
I got ripped off because I tried to organize a 4 night, on boat, excursion, which would be necessary to go to the source to do. In other words, I couldn't do it through a tour company, I needed to talk to the captains. However, I quickly learned that this was futile because since I was alone and no one could share the cost with me, it would cost a fortune. So, I went straight to Ha Long city as soon as I got off the bus in Hanoi, couldn't book it and didn't see any travel agencies that weren't affiliated with hotels. After learning that I was going to have to book a tour, a guy selling tours approached me. I ignored him for a while and went to the booking office to book a ticket. They ignored me for a while (Vietnam isn't know for customer service), then when they finally helped me, they told me they wouldn't know how much a tour cost until the next morning. They wouldn't tell me how much a tour had cost for this day either. Thoroughly confused and annoyed, and figuring that a hotel tour agency would charge up the ass, I decided to try to bargain with the guy from before. I knew I'd end up paying more because it was famine for tour agencies here, but he wheeled and dealed me. I probably paid near $40 more than anybody else (I was told by the hotel lady and a couple other people). Live and learn, huh? It did help me though. It strengthened my resolve. I will not over pay for anything any more.
The tour itself was unusual. I learned that most people have a really shit time on their Ha Long bay tour (another reason to try to book it out of Cat Ba). My first day and night was great. I was on a nice junker with a really good group of people. We went to a cave, saw a poisonous snake, went swimming off the boat (fantastic temperature), had a nice meal, a great sunset, and karaoke for a Uruguayan dude's bday. I even say karaoke 100% sober.
TIP: no matter what they tell you, and they will tell you to do this when booking, DO NOT BRING BOOZE ONTO THE BOATS. Most boat staff won't tell you not to do it either. BUT, every boat has a rule where they will charge you money to drink your own booze. Think of it like an extreme corking fee. A group I hung out with the next couple days had a big run in with the staff because of not being told and being extorted. The boats have booze (over priced) so just avoid the hassle.
Anyway, the tour company had put the 2 night people and 1 night people on the same boat. So, the next morning the 2 night people had to change boats. We were lucky the first day cause we had good staff. The second we stepped on to the other boat there was something wrong. There was a French couple who had booked a non-standard tour where they were to stay on Cat Ba a couple extra days. They didn't have a receipt because the staff takes them when you get on the boat. The staff didn't have it though. So the French couple was politely (I know, strange for the French) explaining the situation and the manager was not listening to anything of it. By the time we got to the island, the manager was in the French guys face yelling and calling him "fucking ignorant". From what I gathered over the next couple days is that this is the more common experience - really rude staff, lack of organization, and unfulfilled promises. From what I gather, no matter who you book through or the price (unless you can afford the luxury boats), you have about a 90% chance to get on one of the shit tours.
Anyway, Cat Ba is a big island and has some things to do like hiking or beach combing. However, it was raining hard so those were out. The city is a waste too. When it cleared up a little in the afternoon, I went to a couple beaches, which were nice, and tried to get to a pagoda set in the hill. I couldn't find the pathway though. Then, I went to the internet cafe to book that flight cause I saw some for around $450. However, that ended up being a two hour waste of time. If you booked through Aerosvit, it was only $400. So I tried to do that. They have a strange payment process. You must put in six digits of your card, then the full card number and info, then your cell number. They send you a SMS (text message) with a temporary password in order to continue. However, something is wrong with the system and it won't send the SMS. So, I talked to a help lady via the websites chat feature. She sent me a test text to make sure the number was working. I got the message and started over. Still wasn't working. So I talked to her again. I'm going to include the conversation below, but to make a long story short, I never booked the ticket and spent 1.5 hours total on chat with this girl. Also, I looked at reviews and info on the company during this time and they said the company had a monopoly in the Ukraine so their service was absolute garbage.

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