Ploning

Watch Ploning, it's the bestest movie evah!

Grumpy Dispatch from Hanoi

Apparently, the people who use Hostelworld are easily pleased. Otherwise, they wouldn't have given high points to Hanoi Guesthouse for service. The staff assured us by email that our booking was okay and that they were sending an airport car for us, which was important because it was our first time to go to Vietnam. Since our plane was coming in at midnight, we didn't want to deal with taxis through the unfamiliar streets of Hanoi. When we got there, there was no hotel pickup. We waited two hours and nothing! We even tried calling Duong Manh Tien, which was the name on the emails from the hotel but he wasn't answering. It was too late to find another hotel so we took a taxi. The kind airport guard negotiated with a taxi for us and made sure we got a reasonable rate. Initially, the drivers wanted to charge us US$20-30! You could almost hear the horror in the airport guard's voice. Finally, he found us one that charged only US$15, which was reasonable, given how far the airport was from the city center.

Our taxi had a difficult time finding Hanoi Guesthouse which was hidden in the side streets in a not so savory area of the city. Then when we got there, the hotel staff told us that they were fully booked despite confirming our reservation through email twice! Instead, they brought us to a sister hotel several buildings away. When we got to Hanoi Phoenix, to our horror, we were expected to climb up several flights of stairs to the 6/F to our room. We were exhausted from the trip and the wait at the airport, it was 3 am in the morning, we had been up for nearly 19 hours, and there was no elevator. Worse, when we tried to complain about the shabby treatment to the staff, he laughed at us.

If it hadn't been 3 am, we would have walked out then and there. You can be sure we spent our first morning looking for better accommodations and checked out of there the first possible moment.

Hanoi Guesthouse's business model sucks. Not only did they fail in their promise to pick us up, but they also booked us in a different hotel which was not part of the plan. It's hard to trust a business that violated our expectations several times: first, by failing to send a taxi when they said they would; second, by failing to provide us with a room despite assuring us that we had a reservation; third, by getting us to book in a different hotel when our expectations were that we were going to be staying with them. We had no idea about the other hotel, what its amenities were and whether it would fit our budget. True enough, walking up to a 6/F room with only a flimsy door lock and no chain on the door was not part of our plans.

What this budget hotel did to us so ruined our first day that it spoiled our happy expectations of Vietnam and almost made us want to go back home. Certainly, not the best way to promote the tourist industry, buggers! If you promise something, make sure you fulfill your promise. Otherwise, tell the customer that you won't be able to give what they ask. If you had treated us right, we would have stayed all of six days. Instead, you only got our custom for one night, and you can be sure that I will not be recommending your hotel to any of my family or friends.

PS. It happened to them too!

Slight Detour

Haven't been blogging as I have been busy organizing a trip to Vietnam next month. I haven't booked a hotel yet as the reviews on Hostelworld and Asiarooms are paralyzing me. Why are there so many unhappy people with their hostels? How can I be sure that where I'm staying will be clean, safe and honest? I can't and the internet is not helping!!! I've quit looking at the sites that cater to tourist and resorted to looking at people's blogs and Flickr accounts for a more honest assessment of the country and the accommodations. And apparently, nobody thinks to post a breakdown of their expenses. It's so hard to anticipate how much I'll be spending, and I don't really want to depend on my card. One thing, though: I've decided not to book through third-party websites and just email the hotel directly. I don't feel comfortable giving my credit card information online, and if I can pay in cash, so much the better. If I feel that I should quit the hostel after only a night, at least they won't be able to charge me additional fees except for what I'm willing to hand them.

Pictures when I return.

Lolcats

Here are our kittens doing a Lolcat. In a tree!

$40!

I earned $40 turking for the past two days. Whooop! Most of it were from the Are These Items Different hits which at one time reached 130,000, which is one of the highest in recent history. Checking to see if all those batteries and cables and screws were different nearly drove me to tears, but look! Shiny! *points at $40*

Of course, I am a mere amateur next to my fellow turkers. One was able to wipe off 12,000 hits for the past week. At $0.01 a hit, that's $120 right there. Over 1/8 of my target!

I know I could be making a lot more money out of this. Of course the money is better now that I have DSL. I still remember when I was trying to do this via dial-up. Not only was my internet connection sooooo slow, there were too few hits. Before a page even loaded to let me accept the hit, it was already gone. It took me the whole 4 hours allocated to me by Castingwords to download their transcription hits, much less transcribe them.

However, I have a real life job and if I don't do my job, I will rue more than the loss of $0.01.

The Things We Think: Freaky Little Schools

Last weekend, blog roulette led me to discover Bob Jones University and Pensacola Christian College (PCC). I got there because in the course of Obama-news, I learned that inter-racial dating was formerly not allowed in BJU.

Further sleuthing led me to discover this page detailing BJU residence hall rules. While students are allowed to bring cars to campus, "underclassmen (freshmen and sophomores) who are under 21 years old may use their vehicles only to drive home and for extension." What seems even more outrageous is that although BJU is a liberal arts school which offers undergraduate degrees in both 2- and 3-dimensional art, creative writing, dramatic production, radio and television broadcasting, and music, both church and instrumental, it has very rigorous rules against what its students are allowed to watch and listen to. The same site warns students that:

• Music must be compatible with the University’s music standards:
  • New Age, jazz, rock, and country music is not permitted.
  • Contemporary Christian music is not permitted (e.g., Michael W. Smith, Stephen Curtis Chapman, WOW Worship, and so forth).
• Televisions, DVD/videotape players and headphones are not permitted in the residence halls; computer DVD players may not be used to view movies.
• You may not possess or play computer and video games rated T, M, A, or E10, or having elements of blood and gore, sensual or demonic themes, or featuring suggestive dress, bad language, or rock music.
• Due to space considerations, appliances such as mini-refrigerators and microwaves are not permitted in residence hall rooms. A refrigerator and microwaves are provided in each residence hall.
• Residence hall students may not watch videos above a G rating when visiting homes in town and may not attend movie theaters.
• All weapons must be turned in for storage. Trigger locks are required for pistols. Fireworks are not permitted on campus.

On the other hand, it's good to know that weapons are allowed on campus, even if rock music isn't.

I also thought this dress restriction for BJU students was cute, naive and retaliatory:

Abercrombie & Fitch and its subsidiary Hollister have shown an unusual degree of antagonism to the name of Christ and an unusual display of wickedness in their promotions. In protest, we will not allow articles displaying their logos to be worn, carried, or displayed (even if covered or masked in some way).

Still, BJU has its defenders. It also seems so much milder than PCC. This site uploaded by a former PCC student details horrors worse than BJU. Women cannot wear jeans, only skirts or dresses. "After bed-time ("lights out:" 11:00 every day, including weekends) students may receive demerits for talking, taking their contacts out, having their feet on the floor (or possibly suspended a few inches from the floor), being in the bathroom, or basically doing anything but lying in bed." No student is allowed to talk or otherwise interact with another student of the opposite sex outside of a "chaperoned" area, and physical contact of any kind, including hugging, tapping, and kissing can be grounds for expulsion. Worse, PCC, unlike BJU, is not an accredited school, despite having been founded in 1974.

A peep at the online forum for PCC alumni revealed that a lot of them regretted having gone to PCU but had to enroll there because their parents wanted them to go there and refused to pay for any other colleges. Granted, PCU is cheap! $1,575 tuition per semester, $1,675 room and board, and some $600 for miscellaneous fees! BJU, in comparison, "costs a little over half of the national average — $16,220 per year (room, board, & tuition)."

But still! Why spend all that time and money in an unaccredited school? Unaccredited schools are fine for people who want to teach homeschoolers, I suppose, or who have no plans of leveraging their degree to their advantage. But what if one wants to take up graduate studies in the future? An 18 year old may not know what he wants right now, but it's better not to close any doors to the future.

Things to Do in New York: 2

Living in an area where the transportation system is erratic at best, I am eager to try out the NY Subway System. I have always been fascinated by trains: they seem to be the most efficient and fastest way to get from one place to the other and they do not involve any exertion on my part. No traffic, no traffic lights, controlled stops, and well-lit rooms that allow uninterrupted reading.

Fare:

• Unlimited ride cards:
  
  • 1-Day Fun Pass: $7.50.
  • 7-Day Unlimited Ride MetroCard: $25.
  • 30-Day Unlimited Ride MetroCard: $81.