59. Hold a million dollars (or dong)

Everyday at sea we receive a "Dean's Memo" which contains all of the important information we need for the next two days.  It also has a quote.  Today's quote was:

 

"There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates."

 

This couldn't be truer.  Every time I see a bird I say a little prayer because I know we have to be semi-close to land.  Speaking of birds…one landed on the fifth deck port side and didn't leave.  They think it was either exhausted or slightly hurt.  Either way it wasn't there this morning so it either slid off when the ship rocked or it had rested enough and decided to fly away.  It was a big seagull looking thing.  Not super cute.

 

So the first night in Vietnam, Jess, Brandie, and I decided to get cute and go out to this club/bar called Shots.  We knew all of the other SASers were going to a place called Apocalypse Now.  Yeah….well we went to get a cab with ZERO success.  No one knew where either was.  So they "suggested" a place called Cat Bar.  We decided, "fine, we'll go there."  So we get into the cab.  He said it was 15 minutes away.  I sat in the front and watch as the meter slowly increased.   Three minutes after we got into the cab and the fare was around 30 USD.  We told him to pull over immediately so we could get out.  The other "fun" thing about this taxi was that the doors remained locked until you paid.  We paid the excessive amount, he turned the meter off, and the doors unlocked.  As we were getting out of the taxi he attempted to stop us to tell us that we hadn't paid enough.  For a split second I was like, "oh shit we counted wrong (it's way easy to miscount in other currency)" and then realized he had pocketed some and was attempting to rip us off even more!  At that point, I said "no we didn't" slammed the door and stomped off.  It wasn't as dramatic as it sounds since we were all in HIGH heels stuck in the middle of this street that had crazy traffic but it was very frustrating.  NO other cabs/taxis understood anything we said so we walked around the area and stopped at this small restaurant.

 

PS about today:  So before every country we have a preport to tell us a little about the culture and logistics of the port.  I'm sorry.  For Hawaii we had preport for 1.75 hours.  This is totally unnecessary.  I realize that Hawaii is completely different from the rest of the United States and if you ask any "local" they will claim Hawaii isn't part of the USA but really.  Really?  I wanted to shoot myself (in the foot with a potato gun) multiple times.  I mean yes I am aware that one US dollar is equivalent to one Hawaiian dollar.  We have all been teasing about that for the last three days.  Not funny or clever any more.