We had a bit of a sleep in, headed down for breakfast and were picked up from the hotel by a mini bus at 10:20 which took us to the big bus stop. The whole bus system seems to be very organized with allocated seating but it is always organized chaos with the various pickups and drop offs. We departed on time but soon stopped outside a hotel supposedly to pick someone up. After a 5 minute wait the bus took off, only to stop about 2 minutes down the road and then proceed to reverse down the road back to the hotel. All in all this took about 15 minutes of waiting and reversing back down the highway, still nobody got on.
It was smooth sailing from there. If the bus stopped to let people on or off, street vendors selling pineapples, water, corn on the cob, lotto tickets and who knows what would jump on trying to sell their wares to the captive audience. We drove through many towns where the locals would point us out to their friends to have a look at. I guess that some of the country people had probably not seem many white people before and we do look very different to them (big nose whitey!). The highlight of the trip for me was a ferry crossing. There was one man who had a large cage on the back of his bike which had about 5 different levels. I waved to one of the other guys through the bus window and pointed to the cage to ask what they did with the contents. I’m pretty sure they were telling the truth and not trying to gross me out, but they indicated that the rats in the cage were for eating.
The bus continued on through the country side past small villages crowded around rivers and over bridges. Finally it arrived in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) only one hour later that we were told. This bought us to the conclusion after our previous trips that you need to add at least an hour to travel times when using the public system in Asia.
As soon as we arrived at the bus depot 7km from central Saigon we were shuffled into a Taxi with a couple from Amsterdam who stayed at the same hotel as us. We managed to convey to the taxi driver that we had already paid and would not pay anymore for the ride. He promptly emptied our luggage out and tried to find another fare. We finally managed to get onto the public transfer bus which we had included in our bus fare, but had no idea where it actually went. I got out with our map to ask where it was going, which took a while and by the time on got back on the bus, all the seats were taken including all the fold down seats in the isle. I had to sit with the luggage up front which did give me a great view of the traffic. It was a bit scary at times when the bus would turn across streets crowded with swarms of motorbikes. How he didn’t hit anyone I don’t know! The bus stopped and we were kicked off, luckily we had booked a hostel so we knew where we were going and I had managed to follow the buses route towards to city. The four of us jumped into a taxi, me in the front with the map and address, and were please to have an honest (but not very good, we stopped twice for directions before he started looking at our map) taxi driver take us to the right place (Taxi drivers in the city have a reputation of driving tourist around in circles and demanding huge fares). We found the hostel down a narrow side alley with the ever present motor bikes zipping past, dumped our bags and headed to the travel agent.
We knew we wanted to do a Mekong Delta tour but were not sure how long. We had also heard that Phu Quoc Island was very beautiful and worth visiting before the international airport opens. Unfortunately we hadn’t realized how close Chau Doc was to the island so were kicking ourselves that we went straight to Siagon. No worries, we worked out that we could do a two day Mekong tour which would get us very close to the Rach Gia where the ferry departs for Phu Quoc Island. So we splurged on a tour with a home stay, ferry tickets and a flight from the Island back to Saigon.
Feeling very happy with ourselves we headed out for a Thai meal at a place called Coriander. I sent Tunde a message that we would be there and she actually arrived before us. We had a lovely meal and talked itineraries and Tunde told us what she had been up to in Saigon. Then we called it a night as we wanted to leave some of our clothes in Saigon whilst we were away and needed to get organized for an early morning.
It was smooth sailing from there. If the bus stopped to let people on or off, street vendors selling pineapples, water, corn on the cob, lotto tickets and who knows what would jump on trying to sell their wares to the captive audience. We drove through many towns where the locals would point us out to their friends to have a look at. I guess that some of the country people had probably not seem many white people before and we do look very different to them (big nose whitey!). The highlight of the trip for me was a ferry crossing. There was one man who had a large cage on the back of his bike which had about 5 different levels. I waved to one of the other guys through the bus window and pointed to the cage to ask what they did with the contents. I’m pretty sure they were telling the truth and not trying to gross me out, but they indicated that the rats in the cage were for eating.
The bus continued on through the country side past small villages crowded around rivers and over bridges. Finally it arrived in Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) only one hour later that we were told. This bought us to the conclusion after our previous trips that you need to add at least an hour to travel times when using the public system in Asia.
As soon as we arrived at the bus depot 7km from central Saigon we were shuffled into a Taxi with a couple from Amsterdam who stayed at the same hotel as us. We managed to convey to the taxi driver that we had already paid and would not pay anymore for the ride. He promptly emptied our luggage out and tried to find another fare. We finally managed to get onto the public transfer bus which we had included in our bus fare, but had no idea where it actually went. I got out with our map to ask where it was going, which took a while and by the time on got back on the bus, all the seats were taken including all the fold down seats in the isle. I had to sit with the luggage up front which did give me a great view of the traffic. It was a bit scary at times when the bus would turn across streets crowded with swarms of motorbikes. How he didn’t hit anyone I don’t know! The bus stopped and we were kicked off, luckily we had booked a hostel so we knew where we were going and I had managed to follow the buses route towards to city. The four of us jumped into a taxi, me in the front with the map and address, and were please to have an honest (but not very good, we stopped twice for directions before he started looking at our map) taxi driver take us to the right place (Taxi drivers in the city have a reputation of driving tourist around in circles and demanding huge fares). We found the hostel down a narrow side alley with the ever present motor bikes zipping past, dumped our bags and headed to the travel agent.
We knew we wanted to do a Mekong Delta tour but were not sure how long. We had also heard that Phu Quoc Island was very beautiful and worth visiting before the international airport opens. Unfortunately we hadn’t realized how close Chau Doc was to the island so were kicking ourselves that we went straight to Siagon. No worries, we worked out that we could do a two day Mekong tour which would get us very close to the Rach Gia where the ferry departs for Phu Quoc Island. So we splurged on a tour with a home stay, ferry tickets and a flight from the Island back to Saigon.
Feeling very happy with ourselves we headed out for a Thai meal at a place called Coriander. I sent Tunde a message that we would be there and she actually arrived before us. We had a lovely meal and talked itineraries and Tunde told us what she had been up to in Saigon. Then we called it a night as we wanted to leave some of our clothes in Saigon whilst we were away and needed to get organized for an early morning.
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