The morning we had booked to travel down to Ho Chi Minh City (HCM City) didn't exactly start out on an auspicious note. Our bus failed to collect us at the predetermined time but they eventually sent a car to drive us to the bus. The 35-seater turned out to be a 28-seater with 35 passengers waiting to board. Fun and games. After much hooha with passengers getting upset when they tried to load even more people onto it (several got off in disgust) we eventually left one and a half hours late with four extra bodies.
The driver was a kamikaze pilot and he stopped multiple times along the way to pick up even more passengers who ended up huddled together up front or on the floor of the aisles ducking whenever police were nearby. We had been told that the bus would stop every few hours for refreshments etc but after three and a half, had made no effort to do so. Eventually, one of the passengers threatened something (all in Vietnamese) as his girlfriend was desperate for a loo. He finally dained to pull over but flatly refused to stop for the planned lunch break - nice guy. And so, after a pretty hectic journey which should have taken a sedate eight hours but only took six at a blistering, reckless speed, we arrived in HCM City (the locals still call it Saigon) still alive but somewhat shaken.
Big, vibrant, dirty and full of tourists. It's also full of warning signs about theft, something we hadn't encountered further north. We spent the first day trying to organise a trip down to the Mekong Delta and prepare for our journey back northwards towards Laos. It's amazing how something like this can take up an entire day but as there are six of us to consider, there's quite a lot involved.
And disaster struck with the SD card in my camera which is storing all the photos to date: it suddenly told me it needs to be formatted and putting it into a PC just told me the same thing so now I don't know if I've lost all my photos or not. The lady at a camera shop told me that they may be recoverable but there's no guarantee. I'll need to find someone in the know once we return to Langkawi. Yikes.
Our hotel was central to some of the city's most active streets so we had a chance to drink in the atmosphere. Sitting out on the streets having dinner one evening was a sight to behold. There were literally hundreds and hundreds, no, make that thousands, of people and bikes passing by in a constant stream. The various restaurants placed chairs out encroaching further and further into the street making it all the more difficult for the passing two-way traffic. So many people and so many of them were tourists. We had heard that Vietnam had a fledgling tourist industry but I honestly can't recall seeing so many in all our travels. Heaven only knows what it'll be like when it matures.
Next we're off to the Mekong for two days which will, I hope, involve a little less trudging around.
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