First meal in Vietnam was a bowl of noodles in a dusty bus station with a crowd of men staring at us as we ate. Welcome to the next adventure!
Today was a long travel day. We had planned to cross into Vietnam and head to a nearby island that promised white sand beaches and crystal blue waters, but something in my gut was telling me to skip the island and head instead to the Mekong Delta. As much as I love a good beach, it can be hard to experience a culture when you are on a tropical island paradise where hotels and a tourism industry have taken over. We had been in sleepy Cambodian seaside towns, beautiful beaches and islands, and were ready for a different sort of adventure.
We had seen islands and beautiful beaches in Cambodia and were ready for a different kind of scenery: the mighty Mekong River!
After crossing into Vietnam and being dropped off at a bus depot just across the the border, we dragged our bags to the makeshift restaurant to finalize our decision over a bowl of noodles. Head to the ferry and see the island, or catch the next bus to anywhere away from this dusty border town?
Ice coffees and noodle soups at a border town bus station bring clarity and energy for the long journey ahead.
Having a full belly is helpful when you need to think clearly, and as we slurped down our first bowl of noodles in Vietnam, I could hear the answer come to me. Forget the island and go see the Mekong Delta! We said goodbye to the other two travelers from London who were taking the bus to Saigon. “So where are you off to then?” they asked, to which we replied, “no idea…maybe somewhere one of those four buses is heading.”
These two were heading to Saigon, but all we knew was that we had no local money, very poor Vietnamese language skills and no bus tickets.
It is immediately clear that nobody in the bus depot speaks much English. I ask again at the ticket window for tickets on the next bus, to anywhere. The man just points at an empty bus in the lot, but shakes his head when I ask for a ticket.
I return to my seat at the cafe where Tim is being entertained by a scrappy kitten wrestling with his backpack. Let me more fully describe the scene. A woman wearing sunglasses, heavy makeup and a matching pajama type of pant suit sits at a low table at the back of the restaurant with a collection of very old watches she seems to be selling to a group of men surrounding her who aren’t looking at the watches anymore because they are staring at us. This all male crowd sits slurping up noodles, smoking, and drinking strong Vietmamese coffee over shaved ice. We are definitely good lunchtime entertainment and I am quickly reminded of how some Vietnamese men find it perfectly acceptable to stare at you like you are an animal in the wild doing something totally unexpected and exotic. I don’t mind the curious stares, and I stare back, nodding and smiling and saying all of the words I know in Vietnamese. Hello. How are you? It’s beautiful. Happy new year. Thank you. This banter in broken Vietnamese is returned with some hesitant smiles and I am convinced these men are warming to us, and us to them. I start to feel that we made the right call in skipping the island and seeking out more adventurous destinations.
The small bus depot where we decided on a destination by waiting for one of these buses to turn on their engines, and eventually sell us a ticket.
I fumble for the Vietnamese section of the South East Asia phrase book we have yet to need, and find a few key words to keep the friendly exchange in motion. I also manage to have one of the guys hanging out in the cafe exchange fifty dollars for some local money. Although the noodle soup lady happily took our dollars, the bathroom attendant was asking for dong, the local currency. I asked the man who changed my money if he had smaller money, motioning to the bathroom attendant. Many bathrooms in parts of Asia require a small fee for the service of a pair of bathroom flip flops and a squat toilet. He frowned after looking in his wallet for bills in a smaller denomination. Another man from the cafe stood up, and handed me a 2000 dong note which is about a 10 cents so that I could pay to use the bathroom. What a guy, I thought. I knew this country was special.
On the bus! This guys job? Collect fares, smoke cigarettes, talk on his phone, sleep, occasionally help someone on or off bus, then sleep again. Exhausting work being the co-pilot!
At precisely 2pm, the driver and his copilot who happened to be two of the men who’d been staring and eating lunch with us stand up suddenly, grab our bags for us and tell us to get on the bus. I guess it was time to go. The bus was heading to a town called Cantho. We picked that town because we wanted to see some of the Mekong delta before heading to Saigon, but mainly because it was the first bus leaving the station after we finished our noodles. We were just ready to go, and any destination would have been fine. After nearly a seven hour bus ride on a local bus with no suspension and only one brief stop for a bathroom break, we arrived.
Arrived in the Mekong Delta’s largest town, can Tho. All the decorations for Lunar New Year make it even more colorful this time of year.
Sometimes it’s the last minute decisions made in bus stations over bowls of noodles with no plans or reservations, no local currency or any idea of bus times, costs or distances, are the decisions that take you exactly where you need to be.
You can Read Tim’s travel stories and hear some clips of him playing saxophone in various odd locations in Cambodia by checking his blog out at timkoelling.com
Check out Tim’s blog too to read his accounts of our South East Asia adventure.
