The hot bus

We slept in long this morning, as we had nothing planned. It felt wonderful! We had booked a night bus to Hoi An the day before, so we had nothing to do but roam the streets of Nha Trang.

We stopped for a little bite to eat at a cafe, and decided we better look for flights from Hanoi to Bangkok. Hanoi is our last destination before flying home to Canada from Bangkok. This ended up being a very long task, as every time we tried to book a flight, it erred. After three hours of frustration, we gave up.

We walked to a travel agency, since booking a flight on our own seemed impossible. She was able to book us the flight we wanted by using her phone and facebooking her counterpart in Saigon (sketchy!). Then, when Brad went to pay, they didn't have a machine to pay with. Brad and the lady went down the street to pay at another store whilst I waited in the office. He paid and came back, and we waited for our tickets to be emailed to us. Remarkably, they were. It was the weirdest experience booking a flight ever!

The lady suggested a place we go for lunch. It was definitely local place, and there was no English there. We pointed to a picture we wanted, and ended up getting a super delicious meal! Bonus.

We then went for Beer o' Clock since we had a short time to kill before catching our bus. While we were at Local 2, the power on the whole block went out. If you've ever seen the tangle of power lines in Asia, you would know this doesn't seem so surprising. We finished our beers and spring rolls, and then went snack shopping for our bus trip. The power was out there, too, so they handed Brad a lantern and we shopped with that!

Our shuttle was 50 minutes late picking us up, and we've now been on the bus for almost 8 hours. We've gone a pitiful 250km. We're supposed to be there at 6am, but we're only a little over halfway. The bus is hot. The AC is weak. The window next to me is shattered, and there's packing tape holding some Bristol board plastic up. We stop every half hour for what I can only imagine are cigarettes. sometimes it smells like cat food on the bus. The bus itself is really nice and quite new, but it's definitely lacking some comforts. You aren't allowed to wear shoes on the bus. I put my flip flops on to go down the bus stairs, and got yelled at by the Vietnamese driver and smacked on the arm. I ended up having to step barefoot in the mud since I wasn't allowed to put my shoes on until I was off the bus.

I do not feel bad about putting muddy footprints in the bus.

Here's hoping for some sleep at 3am.