Travel Diary

I hadn’t slept well. Too much noise. I guess it was the mighty winds blowing against the trees and brushing up against the aluminum roof, but it was making a racket the entire night. I used my AirPods a lot to help. It was the best I could do. Another thing I noticed was that while the bidet option for all toilets was all well and good, the lack of tissues was a problem if you wanted to blow your nose. Thus, again, always carry extra tissues in Vietnam.

We met up with our guide and went over to get a nice tour of a family’s own coffee making setup. They roasted beans in the backyard and then ground it into coffee. The process was fun to observe. After that, we were served some of the coffee, which tasted just fine, but also loaded with sugar. I think that’s what many people expect. For us, we wanted to experience the more authentic taste, so we asked and were happily offered the coffee without the extra sugar or butter. It was quite nice. That said, they did have plenty of condensed milk for anyone wanted to convert it over to that style. We also got to try the cashew milk, which was nice, and were treated so some delicious cantaloupe, which was the best I’d ever had. Just insanely fresh and sweet.

For lunch, we returned to the pho place and had it once again. No complaints of course. It’s an excellent choice and a very good deal. I actually wasn’t going to eat, but as I had not said anything, beef pho was automatically ordered and delivered to me. Ah well. I suppose I could eat.

We then got on the bikes again and rode east and out of town aways, exploring some local coffee tree orchards that were just planted. The trees had blossoms on them which were very fragrant, like jasmines really. Then we rode more and visited some rubber trees where they were tapping rubber from them. Just pretty amazing to see how it’s all made. But time was now short, so we headed back to town.

At the hotel, we grabbed our gear and walked back to the main meeting spot. There, we got some well, challenging news. The host had only booked four spots on the sleeper bus and there were five of us. No big deal except the bus was sold out. Not good. But there was another bus option about 30 minutes later that would still allow us all to catch our flight from Saigon to Da Nang. We didn’t have a huge amount of wiggle room, but there was some. Terry volunteered to take the second bus, so he waited back and we took the little bus that would take us to the main bus station in a larger town.

The guide wouldn’t be joining us on the way back, so there was this extra challenge too, but overall, it was fairly straightforward. We just had to get on the right bus to Saigon. After the short bus ride, we arrived and then waited. Soon, the sleeper bus arrived and we boarded without incident. I had another middle seat this time, but no one to trade with. Very well, I could close my curtains and just listen to an audiobook for five hours. That would do just fine.

Like before, we stopped about 2.5 hours in at a rest stop. All the snacks looked amazing but I bought nothing. Just too many choices and unknowns I guess. It really does affect things sometimes. I did use the restroom this time and found they had a commode-less toilet, or rather the kind that is directly on the floor. It’s less common these days, especially in places foreigners visit, but this really wasn’t a normal spot for westerners. In fact, I don’t think we ran into any outsiders during our Bu Dang trip at all. I didn’t need the advanced version of the toilet anyway, so it was moot.

This stop was fairly fast. We boarded the bus again and continued south. Soon, we arrived at the bus station in Saigon. Elaine would wait there for Terry and Lesly, Bri, and I would continue to the airport. Lesly hailed a Grab. Now this driver was a little nutty, to say the least.

He wasn’t a bad guy at all, though possibly upped the price a little. Hard to say. We just had not booked directly through the app, so no way to tell, and honestly, the price difference was like a dollar or two at most. Just that no one likes price changes midway during the trip. His reasoning was that he thought it was international, but it was the domestic terminal. That wasn’t really the main problem. It’s just the guy wanted to keep talking and talking.

Now communication is normally perfectly fine, in fact it’s nice to speak with locals about anything and everything. It’s just that he didn’t speak English and needed to use his Google phone app for that. We of course would do the same to reply, except we were not driving a car down the streets with thousands of cars and scooters!

So yeah, every time he wanted to speak, he looked down and took his eyes off the road to speak into his app and then check the wording. This was downright dangerous. Not so much for us, as the scooters are mainly the ones in peril when it comes to large cars or SUVs. It just sucked having him keep risking the lives of others for something so meaningless. The conversation wasn’t even anything of value, just him saying we needed to try pho (ah, for the seventh time?) or a bunch of things that maybe someone there for the first day would want to do. He even said he could take us to a great spot, and other nonsense. Sadly, he just didn’t get the hint that we didn’t really want to chat—not at the risk of other people on the road. I think in his mind, he was a perfect driver and hey, accidents rarely ever happen.

Except they do. And they did…

To be clear, this accident was not the fault of our driver. It just had occurred pretty much right in front of us, maybe 30 yards down the line. But about three scooters all crashed together with two of them falling down. Impossible to know how much damage to those involved. Our driver drove around, and really not much could be done by non-emergency personnel. No one looked gravely injured, although possible a broken bone or two. Cannot really say. Yet, it showed that yes, the roads have some risk, and it’s disappointing that a clueless driver takes it so casually. He made no extra money with his unwanted chatting. In a coffee shop, it would have been nice to hear his goofy stories of course. On the ride to the airport, it was most unwelcome. I don’t think he ever really understood this. But we said farewell there. All in all, I don’t think he’s a bad person or has bad intentions outside of wanting to just earn more money. He just does not understand the extra risks he presents to others.

We checked in just fine and found that wow, people don’t travel much at night in Vietnam. The airport was quite empty around 8pm. Once the bags were left and we got our boarding passes, we waited for Elaine and Terry, who arrived about 20 minutes later. Terry’s bus experience was probably better than ours as he didn’t even have a transfer, but a straight shot from the tiny town of Bu Dang. But they checked in too and we we through security (fairly fast) and to our gate area.

Since there was extra time, we stopped at an airport cafe for some food. Yeah, it’s an airport spot, but since it was domestic, the prices were not the typical gouging one usually finds at airports. I guess they know that the locals are the main buyers of these flights and not ready to forgo a lot of unnecessary income.

Finally, it was time to board. Zone 3 again and it came up pretty quickly, although the flight wasn’t full and there were many empty seats. I had the aisle and the middle was empty. The plane was in good condition though dated as well. I noticed the old push-pad for the different “stations” on the armrests, something I’d not seen in over 20 years. I imagine there were the old two-prong headphone jacks too. Oddly, there were somewhat modern monitors mounted overhead that all dropped down and rose up together. I guess those were for the safety briefings and to run some ads before each flight. I had my noise cancelling AirPods for the latter issue.

It was a fast flight. We took off just fine and got some water handed out during the quick trip and then landed in Da Nang, Vietnam, a brand new city for us to explore. Once disembarked, we had a private bus to take us to our Airbnb across the Han River.

There, we had no issues getting inside and discovering the nice pad. It worked very well, with a great kitchen and table downstairs, plus a fine living room area where people could read and relax. Rooms were upstairs. I got mine after the others had chosen. It was two flights up and had a nice bed and private bathroom. No windows though. The bathroom had a small one, but immediately outside it was a brick wall, like out of a sitcom travel episode. At any rate, the place worked quite well for us. We went out to get snacks at a nearby convenience store, which wasn’t hard to find as there were three of them just around the corner. Stocking up on tasty treats, we then headed back to the flat and everyone chatted a bit and dispersed for the night. We’d all explore Da Nang the next day.

Oh yeah, I did shower, or attempted to, but the water temp was not great. I guess it gets used up fast there. I was only able to wash arms and some of my legs. Yeah, not ideal, but what can you do.