Exiting the airport into Ho Chi Minh was interesting. We were met with hundreds of people lined up as if they were there to welcome us in. We quickly found our ride and had a nice night meeting the program coordinator and a few of the students who were celebrating their very recent graduation of the program. The $20ish hotel was nice enough. I had to wait to use internet until today because it wasn't working at the hotel...I'm so spoiled.
A lot of what we saw reminded us of Mexico, the shops along the side of the road, the scooters, the foreign language...
The $13 bus ride from Ho Chi Minh to Phnom Phen was nice. But once we got here we quickly got into a scam job...welcome to Phnom Phen! First of all, the stewardess said that they changed the drop off location, so we then needed to let LanguageCorps know that the pickup address needed to be changed. The stewardess let us use her phone to let them know. But right when I get off the bus I see a man running up to me with a sign that had Brian Shafer and LeAnn Winter spelled out on it. So, great, they figured out the location change and met us there. But...we ended up seeing another guy with our names on his sign as well, but his clearly said LanguageCorps, and I couldn't remember if the first guy's sign had said LanguageCorps. But thinking that they send two drivers by accident we decided to go with the first one...whoops. He took us in his tuk tuk (a small framed cab hooked to the back of a motorcycle) a couple blocks away and stopped. He got out and asked us what hotel we needed to go to and then tried to get us to confirm a tour of the city with him tomorrow before he would take us to the hotel. I told him that I would just pay him to take us to the LanguageCorps hotel, but he said that it was too far. We were both uncomfortable with the whole situation and we asked him to just take us back to the bus station. He reluctantly said okay but said that we needed to pay him $5. I said that I would give him three. He rolled his eyes and said $4. He took his time getting back, I'm not sure why or what he was doing, but once we got there the driver with the official LanguageCorps sign was still there, thankfully! He was able to call some LanguageCorps people and they told me to give the driver who scammed us $2. He was trying to get his $4 but I told him that he manipulated us and that I didn't what to give him any money, but I did as I was advised and gave him two dollars, yeah thanks for scamming us, here's two dollars!
We are now getting settled into our hotel rooms that we are staying in for the next two weeks. They are nice! But we don't have the right voltage adapters yet so we can't charge phones or computers. There's a shopping center close, I might go for a walk later. We are planning on doing some sight seeing in the morning tomorrow with one of the drivers from LanguageCorps and then we have a welcome dinner with the rest of the teachers, oh yeah! It's looking up...glad internet works.
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