How Pleiku became a blessing

Pleiku was an important site during the Vietnam War for a variety of reasons. To the west, the North Vietnamese army had bases in neighboring Cambodia. Furthermore, as it is centrally located in the country's highland region, Pleiku was a defensive stronghold for the Republic of Vietnam.
We arrived there past 10pm after an 8 hour mini-bus ride from Nha Trang on the coast. How many 8+ hour bus rides had we taken in the preceding months? Too many to count...
Exhausted, we searched around the town for a place to stay, but it was seeming pretty remote and not much was around. We eventually decided to splurge on a nice hotel which stood out significantly among the other drab buildings in the area. (By splurge I mean somewhere around $40 for the night). It was perhaps one of the best moments of our time in Vietnam.
That is not to downplay the exhilaration of riding a motorbike amidst a sea of a million other motorbikes in hectic Saigon. Or exploring one of the most amazing and underrated cuisines out there. Or relaxing over sweet & bitter coffee in a town that resembled European countryside, the Pacific Northwest, and Vietnam all rolled into one in the hilly city (Le Petit Paris) of Da Lat. Or spending all day on a deserted white-sand beach with turquoise waters and fresh seafood kiosks outside of Nha Trang. These moments, as well as others, were truly wonderful.
But to access those moments was another story, one that guidebooks and older brothers fail to elucidate in their tales of adventure in 3rd world countries. The reality of traveling becomes a burden at points in time. Things add up, such as heat and humidity, dirty clothes, language barriers, money-grubbing locals, liars, scammers, sketchballs, long bus rides (as mentioned), waiting...
So the hotel in Pleiku was rather a godsend. On the top floor was a banquet room where multicolored lights were flashing late into the night and old Vietnamese couples were ballroom dancing a live cover band's rendition of the Beatles song "And I love her."
Shawna and I took a shower and wrapped up in the soft bathrobes that the hotel supplied. We put on the slippers, blow-dried our hair, and took advantage of whatever amenities a 5-star hotel affords. We dove into bed, at least a queen-size with plenty of room to sprawl out, and fell into a deep sleep, snuggled up from the damp cold of outside. The frustrations of travel were temporarily relieved. That was a golden moment. Regardless of the fact that the next day we were to wake up early and cross a remote border into Cambodia with little preparedness, the hotel was our everything.