Vietnam and I are not friends

Vietnam and I have had a rough ride thus far. It's been bad experience after after experience. It started with a pedicure. They walk around the streets handing out flyers, I find one, verify a price with the guy and am whisked away but I suddenly feel something off and should have ran at that point. The guy I talked to seemed to be arguing with a worker. The lady takes me up 5 flights of stairs to a dungeon type room with some chairs. Another woman appears and gets a bucket to rinse off my feet but doesn't rinse anything, the water jut sits there. As time goes on its apparent to me that the one working on my feet has no idea what she's doing. A painful, completely unsanitary (and yes I've already lowered my standards knowing where I was) mani/pedi ensues. I hand the lady my money and she tells me I owe her more, we go back and forth and I ask for the guy I talked to downstairs, she tells me he doesn't speak English and they work for the same person. After 5 minutes of going back and forth and getting no where I just left, I figured she had 5 flights to yell but she didn't say anything. Up until now I just would have paid it since this is a communist country and I've read a lot of stories where a dispute over $5 costs a tourist $100 because the police are corrupt and what not. By the time we leave I'm steaming. There's a massage place across from the hotel that a guest recommended to me so I go in for a foot massage and bad experience #2 occurs. It's dirty and not a foot massage, it was a one handed calf massage and this place seemed like 95% brothel 5% massage place. I leave unhappy, get to the hotel and check my shorts as its felt like she got oil on them and she did! I had a longer pair of shorts on rolled up so when I unroll them there are two huge streaks of oil. I immediately put them in the laundry, they return surprise surprise stained. I march over and tell the woman about my issue, I'm so fed up at this point but I keep cool, she shrugs and points to a spot on my leg saying that's where the massage goes up to. I brought two pairs of shorts to travel, looks like I now have one. I curse to myself for an hour about how much I hate this country.

Then this morning we load the bus to go to Mui Ne. Buying an open sleeper bus ticket is what most travelers do. You pay one price depending on the number of stops you want to make and can get on and off at will. We decided not to do it because we plan on taking the train at least once (Michael promised this one is more Harry Potter style!) so its cheaper to buy each leg. The other reason is because we read that there's no guarantee as to what kind of bus you'll get so you could be taking a 13 bus ride in a cramped crappy bus and they tend to drop you off far from the backpacker accommodations. Well that's what we're doing today but only for 5 hours. We are in a sleeper bus, we are crammed in like Asian sardines, I say Asian because there is NO way they had westerners in mind when they made these coffins. Your feet go under the sleeper in front of you but mine don't fit unless I sit straight up and then my head hits the ceiling. There is barely 12 inches between me and the next bottom row but the seats aren't aligned so that's a plus but the person on the top bunk and behind me has their foot a mere 10 inches from my head. And to top it all off while I'm writing this an ant crawled down my shirt.

*bonus the long haired backpacker next to me who looks like he hasn't showered in a week has a lovely croupy cough and an endless stream of snot. Fun fun

We arrived at Mui Ne and it has yet to impress me but our hotel has a pool on the "beach" which is nice. There's no actual beach just a place from the back of the hotel to walk right in the water. There is debris everywhere from the tropical storm they had this week and it looks like a lot of places are closed. When we arrived we were informed there wouldn't be power until the evening, no problem we figured it was from the storm but later we found out it happens once a week. The government shuts it off and sends it elsewhere (Cambodia?), we were told no one cares enough to invest in energy. Oh and Facebook is blocked!

Pics: me in my "seat"
Michaels leg room, there's no where to put your bags and since he had a middle seat he didn't get an air vent
Bug bites after Michael applied some anti itch cream, my legs are just as bad :(