Alyssa, Mariela, and I decided we wanted to begin our three week holiday from teaching with a trip to Vietnam.
I spent weeks researching and had a whirlwind itinerary planned, starting from Ho Chi Minh City in the south and working our way up through the scenic coast by train.
Hurricane Ketsana ruined all that last week, resulting in much freaking out on our parts.
We settled on just flying into HCMC and then flying directly to Hanoi. We were disappointed about missing all the lovely parts of central Vietnam, but maybe some other time.
We arrived in Ho Chi Minh City on Sunday morning around 9:30am. We exchanged some baht for Vietnamese dong and made a game plan.
Task #1: Buy a plane ticket to Hanoi for the 9th.
Task #2: Secure a place to stay on the evening of the 8th.
Task #3: Get to Rach Gia and buy boat tickets to leave for beautiful Phu Quoc Island Monday morning.
It was a pretty overwhelming task list, really, in a new, unfamiliar city and unable to speak even one word of the language. But my friends and I are go-getters, so we went and got some plane tickets.
The next stop was the taxi stand, where we got in, chose a hostel from my list at random, and set off.
It's a cute place, and we're looking forward to staying there. We left, had some lunch at a nearby restaurant, and then started walking toward the Ben Thanh market where we could catch a city bus to the bus station where we could catch a private van to Rach Gia. Simple, right?
As we were walked in the direction of the market, we passed about a bajillion little travel agencies advertising bus tickets to Rach Gia. Fearful of missing the last bus there, we decided to pop in and inquire about bus times. They told us the next bus left at 2:00, and the last at 5:00. It was 1:15. Not wanting to get into another unfamiliar town at midnight, we decided to buy our tickets there for the 2:00 departure.
Enter the Roachmobile, our lovely mode of transport for a bone-rattling 7-hour drive at breakneck speeds over, around, and through the zillion potholes that make up the road from HCMC to the coast.
By the time we arrived at Rach Gia, it was dark. We got off the van without a clue where to go, and were promptly swarmed by motorbike drivers. We didn't want to be separated, and we asked one of the van passengers if he knew of a taxi service. He didn't.
There was one vehicle that wasn't a motorbike, but didn't look any more promising. A rickshaw-esque contraption pulled by a bicycle, it looked as though it were built for two small passengers, maybe. We didn't have much choice, so the three of us (and our backpacks) crammed in and perched precariously on the wooden plank seats.
We found a hotel, crashed, and got up early for our boat's 8am departure.
To be continued...
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