- Be picked up at the airport by a taxi driver stinking of whiskey who would artfully dodge the question, "Have you been drinking?"
- Witness a 3-on-3 motorbike fight, waged by 6 teenage girls riding 2 speeding motorbikes
- Have the single highway from the airport be inexplicably closed down, and while the other 600 bikes and cars on the road turn off on to side streets, have our driver cross the cement divider and drive 70kmph directly against oncoming traffic using his horn as our only defense
- Come within 8 inches and 4 horn honks of a head-on collision with a bus
- Survive the aforementioned ride into the city and retire to a guest house, thinking our adventures for the night are over
- Be completely wrong
- Head out to find dinner and realize that our only option this late (11pm) was a corner shop serving only bread and Beefsteak Omeletes
- Really enjoy a Beefsteak Omelete
- Fall knee-deep into a curbside puddle in front of four locals who would laugh heartily and then demand that I go back into my hotel room to wash off
- Be chased from a cafe by armed police officers for trying to buy ice cream and water after curfew
- Decide the best and least challenging option would be to head back to our hotel room
- Be wrong again
- Get back to the hotel to find a metal garage gate blocking the only entrance
- Be allowed back in after knocking loudly for several minutes and giving a half-positive response to the question, "You stay here another night?"
Thanks to the arrival of a brutal storm (#5 of the 12 big ones Vietnam gets every year), Day Two paled in comparison, but we did manage to get a free hotel room for the day, if only for the fact that the hotel manager decided that I looked so dirty, it would be a fiscally sound decision for him to put me up in a room rather than have me sit in his lobby.
Our night train to Sapa awaits...
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