The Hai Chau hotel in Chau Doc provided the most amazing service. The bus company, Phuong Trang, provide a free pickup from your hotel and as I waited in the street amidst in the heat and cacophony of the working day, the hotel brought out a refreshing cup of Vietnamese tea for me. I then saw the guy on the desk pop to the shop next door and come back bearing a box of Vietnamese coffee which he presented to me as a gift to take home. Perhaps he'd read the blog about "ant coffee" and thought he could change my mind... a lovely gesture. Then, as soon as I waved goodbye and got into the minibus to go to the bus station, the guy from the hotel, with somewhat indecent haste I thought, leapt on his moped and sped away. I thought he was glad to see the back of me! So I was amazed to see him waiting for me at the dusty bus station organizing my ticket as he told me "they don't speak English here, so I came to help". He got the ticket, showed me to the bus, made sure my luggage was on board and told me about the rest stops. Bearing in mind they phoned and booked the ticket for me, and I paid the normal rate so they didn't get any commission, this really was unbelievable service. And given for a big sparkly clean room, balcony, good modern bathroom, two dinners, two breakfasts, laundry and a bottle of wine, I paid less than £25 a night all in, it was such a bargain, even with the pound in freefall as it is. Highly recommended. It's a family run place and the only added cost is the young son of the family sits with you in the neon lit restaurant as you eat to practise his English. A very small price to pay.
I wasn't expecting much of the bus to be honest, £4 for a hotel pickup and a journey of 160 miles in 6 - 7 hours. But the buses here have really got their act together. It was comfy and clean and everyone had their own seat, makes a change... And you get a bottle of water and a cold wipe. I was also expecting horrors at the loo and lunch stop, but again I was really surprised. The stop was in a huge dark warehouse place with foodstalls and tables and the loos could give any UK motorway service area a run for their money. There were two other Westerners on my bus and at the lunch stop with over 20 buses disgorging their passengers, we were still the only ones in the village. Only problem with that is they are not used to explaining the intricacies of how long and where to get back on the bus in anything other than Vietnamese but universal sign language and pointing to the hands on my watch worked well as usual.
And the time (almost...) sped by. The entertainment these days is a flat screen at the front and gone are the Kung Fu subtitled films. We were serenaded all the way by I think someone who was Vietnam's answer to Leona Lewis... It was like a football match, a journey of two halves. The first half was slow as we made our way on small roads across lots of rickety bridges over the brown, muddy slow moving delta waters, through small towns, past ripening rice paddies and over one wide bit on a ferry. Then suddenly we seemed to leave agricultural Vietnam behind and joined a motorway, stopping every so often at the toll booths, and speeded up. Soon, the motorbike numbers steadily increased as we approached Saigon and the bus station. The usual melee of taxi drivers descended on us as we collected our bags. Made me think of ants again...There are so many stories of taxi scams both here and in Hanoi that I took the guidebook's advice, ignored the touts, put on my best memsahib face and found a Mai Linh metered cab. We wove our way through the millions of motorbikes in the rush hour. I've no idea how it all works, there seem to be no rules, but it's almost like a ballet as the traffic just seems to flow around each other, quite amazing to behold.
So now, as I sit in the Saigoncity Hotel awaiting Ant and sipping my tiny £5 glass of why why, I have surely moved back into flashpacking mode, bring it on!
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Location:Nguyễn Văn Trỗi,,Vietnam
