It was going to be a long day. The brochure for the day trip to Halong Bay had the coach picking us up from the guesthouse at 7.00 am and dropping us back after 9.00 pm. I was running a temperature but didn’t want to cancel.
About two hours into the journey, I started feeling worse. I spoke to my friends and decided to opt out of the trip. The coach was stopped and the guide hailed a taxi. I was embarrassed that a bus full of tourists was being held up because of me but everybody was sympathetic. Probably they wanted me off the coach before things got worse. Eventually, I made it back to the guesthouse by about 10.00 am.
The receptionist hesitated when I asked for the room key. She muttered something but I didn’t understand a word of Vietnamese. The phone rang and she answered it, just as another guest badgered her. It was going to be some time before she attended to me.
I didn’t see the key for 205 hanging from the board and assumed that my room was being cleaned. I turned towards the stairs and the receptionist shouted but I had to use the toilet and rushed upstairs. The door was locked and I knocked a couple of times. No cleaner inside? I was walking back to the stairs when a sleepy middle-aged man opened the door. Ah! I thought, instead of cleaning the room, he was having a snooze. I pushed past him to the toilet and the first thing I noticed in the tiny room was that my suitcase was missing. Then a naked woman on the bed pulled a sheet over herself and started screaming at me. I screamed back, “thieves, police.” She jumped up and slapped me. I hit the man. She scratched my face. I kicked him. Pillows and shoes were flying across the room. Everybody was shouting, including the people now collected near the door.
The police arrived and I could see some people were in trouble. Not expecting me back till very late in the evening, some of the staff had rented out my room to this young woman and her customer for an hour or two.
© Percy Aaron
Wow Laos 