title: `'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x99 in position 0: invalid start byte. Hex?
body: <p>I am creating an email/messaging web app to practice django, and I am saving message text data as a unicode string (<code>&lt;type 'unicode'&gt;</code>).  Most of the time, this works, but when i try to retrieve the data, occasionally i will get the following error:</p>
  
  <p><code>'utf8' codec can't decode byte 0x99 in position 0: invalid start byte. You passed in '\x99\x8c\x1f\xcf\xd1\xafp\xda9\x82\xb8\xf3\x19(\xed\xad\xd2E\x87\xc1\xe3d\xeeT\xbc\xd7\xb1\x9fJ\xb9\x19\x1e\x07x&gt;\xb9\xa3\x8c,\xc3\xca\x8eg\xd4\x91\x10(\x17T%d\x9e\xfe\x0b"/\xa5</code>\x9d\x06\xb7\xc1AU\xf0{\x8a\xbd@\xe1\x94S\x9f\xf0\xb0\xc1\nw\x0e!\x8fG!\x97\xc5\xc30/\x9b\xce\xe9\x1aQ\x97\x9f\xec\x8e\x99Y\xe3\xa5\xd9\x9b\x11\xa8\xc9\xdf\xaf-!\xc5\xfd\xa2\xdb\x04\xabO\x0b\xf9y\x9d\x96tM\x1e\xc4\x9a\x87' ()`</p>
  
  <p>I am not sure how to convert this string of what appears to be hex values (i have no idea why it looks like this, it only does this for some messages, and it seems very very random) back to unicode or something usable.  <code>.encode()</code> and <code>.decode</code> functions are not solving the problem, and I have exhausted every method and resource that I could find.  Any help would be greatly appreciated :)</p>