Back To Da Nang......Dang!

So we were packed and ready to go. Well, almost. As James had had his suit measured up but not yet tweaked he needed to get down to Huang Kim’s and get it sorted and posted back to Blighty. He would head down at half 10 to be there for 11:00am ready for the alterations. I stayed in the hotel room and lazed around watching some football on the telly box, waiting for his return and check-out at noon.

At 11:00am precisely the power to the room cut off. I thought that maybe it was check-out time, but when I checked with reception it seemed that the whole hotel had been cut off. When the door to the hotel room swung open I saw a red-faced James, for more than one reason. He had been fast-walking back to the hotel, but also, the power-cut had hit the entire town and therefore the tailors had not been able to alter his suit. He was not happy. The alterations were needed so they couldn’t just send it home, and we toyed with the idea of taking it to Hanoi to get it fixed, but in the end he had to make another journey down there to see if the power had come back on and agree a plan of action. But that would have to wait, as we would have to check out of the hotel first.

View from the top of the hotel.....I was bored waiting

Due to the lack of power there was a small queue of people also wanting to check out. There was no power so there was no way to pay by credit card, and everything had reverted back to pen and paper. We didn’t want to pay in cash, as it cost us extra to withdraw from the ATMs, but that was our only option. We paid nearly 2 million Dong and got the heck out of there. We returned to Treats for lunch, and James left me after we finished to pay another visit to Huang Kim’s and see what the status was with his suit. I sat and read my book while I waited for him to return. He returned about 30 minutes later, still with no suit, and still with no alterations done. The power was still not back so they still couldn’t do any work. This time James was a little more agitated, as time was dragging on and we had arranged a relatively cheap taxi ride back to Da Nang with the restaurant, rather than negotiate the dodgy foreigner-unfriendly local bus again. The taxi was due at 2:00pm and our train was at 4:50pm so we didn’t want to wait much longer.

The streets of Hoi An 

James took one last trip down to the tailor as I remained in Treats, reading my book and watching the world go by. He said he would be quick, but time was dragging. The taxi driver arrived and tried to raise the price from 200,000 VND to 300,000 VND, but I managed to get him back down to 220,000 VND, only a small increase, and considering he was having to wait til James got back I think it was a fair deal. It was about 45 minutes before he returned, having got the measurements taken and left it with them to alter and post back home. So we were ready to leave Hoi An and get back to Da Nang for our train.

It didn’t take us long in the taxi to get back to Da Nang and I think we were both glad we made the extra effort to get down to Hoi An as Da Nang doesn’t seem to have much – it is essentially just a stop-off point to get to Hoi An in the south and Hue in the north. As we clambered aboard our train (across the railway tracks mind, the door was on the wrong side to the platform…) we found our cabin and hoped that we wouldn’t have any other bunk-mates for the 18 hour journey.

Da Nang train station

The first bunk-mate we met was a little cockroach scuttling across the floor, but we soon chucked him outside to fend for himself. The train seemed a little older and dirtier than the previous one we had got but as we left the station there was nobody else to accompany us on the way. Hopefully that would stay the same throughout and that nobody would be joining us in the middle of the night a little further down the line. And that there wasn’t another mouse scuttling around under the bunks.