We pretty much spent the last two days laying out by the ocean in lounge chairs, you can get two of them for the whole day for $3. The lounge chairs are also really padded like small beds, which makes them really comfortable. All of the locals wait until the sun goes down before they come out as they don't want to get sun on their skin. As the sun moves lower in the sky throwing shadows off of buildings and trees the locals move closer and closer to the water, while staying safely in the shadow. Here is a picture of the beach when the sun is out:
Here it is once the sun can't be seen anymore:
We had flown South to Nha Trang from Hanoi but were told by everyone that we met that Hoi An was a can't miss place in Vietnam so we decided to catch a bus back North 12 hours to Hoi An. The buses only leave at night between 6pm - 8pm arriving in Hoi An around 6am - 8am. We went around to travel agents to check prices and found out that all of the night buses were already sold out. I don't know how everyone else plans so far in advance, it's much more fun making plans on a daily basis. With all of the night buses booked up we had a bit of a panic that we would be stuck in Nha Trang.
We found one bus ticket vendor who had tickets for nearly double the price of everyone else on a "super luxury" bus. After much discussion we decided that we would have to pay for the luxury bus as it was our only option, it was more complicated than that but I won't further bore you with the details. We went back to the shop to tell the vendor that we would pay the ridiculous amount of money for the ticket but that bus had already filled up as well. The ticket lady made a few more phone calls and found a bus company that agreed to send an extra bus because of such a high demand. We were elated that we could pay the normal price and leave when we wanted to.
When the bus arrived we were the first people on the bus, which I was really excited about because that meant we could pick our seats. Wrong, the seats were preassigned and the bus was full so switching seats was not possible. We were given the absolutely worst seats possible, on the bottom row of the sleeper bus in the back, next to the toilet, on a raised platform above some bus components. The berth was so small that my legs would not fit, not even close, and I couldn't sit up as I would hit my head.
The road from Nha Trang to Hoi An is a 1 lane each way type of "highway" and as it can get quite congested, the driver of the bus kept swerving into the other lane to pass trucks, cars and motorbikes. The driver didn't seem to care where he was he just wanted to pass people and would even do so on blind turns. Being in the back made this particularly scary as we were the last part of the bus to get out of the way of oncoming honking trucks. The immense speed the driver was driving with and the bumpy roads also meant that my body was actually being lifted off of my bed/seat and I would smack my head on the low ceiling above me. The driver insisted on honking every time he passed other vehicles and would stop randomly on the side of the road for half an hour at a time.
The toilet seat was also banging in the toilet at every bump and had a wonderful smell of urine emanating from it. After sitting around for 3 hours and filling every possible space on the bus we left for Hoi An.
We arrived in Hoi An safely and 15 hours after we had first loaded onto the bus. I sure hope Hoi An is worth this effort.
Check out the rest of my pictures here:
No comments:
Post a Comment