Foiled by Tet

Greetings! You may have noticed that I haven't posted for a while in thishere blog, and that's because I've had pretty much the best January ever--meaning, I worked for two full days the entire month. It was a circumstance that surfaced thanks to major holidays falling close to each other on the Gregorian Calendar, and the timing of a family visit the beginning of January. Tomorrow, I go back to work.

Right now I feel like I'm looking down the barrel of a gun.

But all that aside, I thought I'd fill everyone in a little bit on what's been happening. For the most part, things have gone great. The problem with things mostly being great is that, if and when they do go to shit, they go to shit in a big way. Case in point--Traveling Vietnam During Tet, which I've decided to refer to as Tetgate.

Tet is the Vietnamese name for Chinese/Lunar New Year. To call it "Chinese New Year" is taking your life in your own hands in Vietnam. They have "Tet", which is like Christmas, New Year's, and everybody's birthday all rolled into one. Needless to say, it's a crazy time in the country. Everybody travels all over the place to see their families, and the ones that don't are absolutely thrilled to be working over Tet. They're bursting with so much happiness you almost can't tell, what with being prodded into buses every other minute and struggling to understand what's happening to you while any attempt you make to communicate is either answered begrudgingly or roundly ignored.

I'm going to say with some measure of confidence that, after Tetgate, I understand how livestock herded into trucks on their way to slaughter feel. I and my fellow travelers were shown about the same amount of compassion.

Before I get too far into it, let's examine geographically the area I am talking about. I began my journey well before Tet, when everyone was on holiday but nobody was really celebrating yet. I'd been itching to see more of Cambodia since my visit in November, and figured it was close enough and cheap enough to survive in for a week or so while the entire country of Vietnam got drunk. After a few days in Phnom Penh, I headed down to the south coast, making for a sleepy little river town called Kampot.

AB's route in Cambodia. Thanks, Lonely Planet.

 It is a brilliant little place, full of crazy but good-hearted expats, NGO charity projects, super-friendly locals, cheap beer, and the best/freshest green and black pepper I've ever had anywhere. Lovely, lovely place. I decided I didn't want to go any further than Kampot, and settled in for a good week at this Hippy-Dippy Bungalow place I found with its own riverside deck, complete with sassy bartenders, a gladiator beam, and bio-luminescent plankton. I even met a Chastity Brown fan there. More on that later.

Mid-way through my stay, I made arrangements to go to Ho Chi Minh through the border crossing at Ha Tien, a small town on the Gulf of Thailand, technically part of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. Turns out this was the right decision, as I would learn later all the buses to HCMC from Phnom Penh were totally booked. Expat/traveler traffic to Cambodia was quite high at the time, with everyone clued in to the fact that you don't want to be traveling Vietnam during Tet.

So I bought my ticket, thinking that everything would be taken care of all the way through to HCMC, like the ticket said. For $20, I thought it was a safe assumption to make. What I forgot was that assumptions are never good to make, whatever the price. In Vietnam, things are almost never what you expect.

Beginning in the morning, the minibus came to collect me approximately 40 minutes after the scheduled departure time. We tooled around town, picking up other travelers crossing into Vietnam from various guesthouses in Kampot. We were then deposited on a stifling, BO-soaked bus and sent on our way. We made a brief stop in Kep, but in less than an hour we were at the border crossing. By this time, it was high noon--a round 90 minutes behind schedule. This didn't bother me too much, except trekking across no-man's land between Cambodia and Vietnam, and then waiting in a stuffy border station that smelled like its toilet for 45 more minutes while two border guards read every single page from every single passenger's passport.

Finally, we got back on the bus, which I now assumed was heading to the next stop, and so on, and so on. We arrived in Ha Tien town, and immediately 80% of the bus's population lost its shit. I was confused. Turns out, many of the passengers were counting on getting to Phu Quoc Island from Ha Tien, and had missed the last boat for the day by about 45 minutes. So now they were stuck in Ha Tien, and raising a holy stink about it, a rather entitled Frenchwoman being the leader of the assault. I watched silently, secretly glad it wasn't me, but also sort of laughing at them in my head because they were doing nothing but losing face, which other passengers were pointing out to them. The bus driver gave them the Don't-Blame-Me-I-Just-Work-Here look, clearly in over his head.  Somewhere in all the commotion, everybody was told to get off the bus and pile into a tiny little station on the corner, which I immediately crossed for some chicken rice and Nuoc Mia (sugarcane juice), while the jilted Phu Quoc people continued to stomp insults all over a bewildered and largely indifferent bus driver.

Even at this point, I stupidly assumed my travel itinerary would be OK. After all, I didn't need a boat, and the bus I would be taking to Ho Chi Minh would be here any minute.

Any....minute.

It was now 2:10 PM, ten minutes past the departure time for this "bus" to Ho Chi Minh. A minibus pulled up and we all surged for it, me staying close to three other people I'd met who were heading to HCMC and were likewise in the dark about what was going on. The woman from the travel company announced loudly that this was a bus for Can Tho, and when she saw us going to board, she pulled us back. Three of us, though there were four for Ho Chi Minh. One woman got on the bus, and I tried to point this out to Travel Company Lady. "No, no, you Saigon. Wait one minute."

Minibus leaves with the other HCMC woman looking at us through the window with some confusion, and Travel Company Lady says: "Saigon! OK,  now you take motorbike to bus station. Free, no money!"

OK, OK. So me and the two other Ho Chi Minh pilgrims, sweet-natured Chileans named Richard and Nicolas, all got on the back of our own motorbike and headed to the so-called "bus station." I suppose "bus station" is accurate from a literal standpoint, as the "bus" was "stationery," but this was no travel hub. It was a bus idling on the side of the road about 2km outside of town, and a pretty rickety looking bus at that. The bus's money-collector opened a hatch in the back of the bus near the exhaust pipe and threw our bags in without a second thought. The Chileans and I exchanged looks. We entered the bus, and were greeted with a crowd of weary-looking Vietnamese, some sitting in seats on the bus, others crouched together on plastic stools in the aisles. Any available sitting space on the bus was taken, even the lowered platforms near the door that we would called steps. If you can sit there, it's a seat they can sell you. Three seats, presumably for us, were open in the very back. We scooted past everyone and took our places. OK. Saigon.

It wasn't ideal, but hey, it was something. We were moving forward. Nicolas and Richard seemed in better spirits, a little wide-eyed by the situation, but friendly. Nicolas started telling me with great patriotism about Chile, insisting I had to go there. I of course agreed. About five minutes into this conversation, the Money Man for the bus came and told us, in Vietnamese, we had to pay to go to Rach Gia.

Rach Gia? I'd been there before, and it was no where near Saigon. "Rach Gia, no no, Sai Gon lam on," I tried to say, and then used the rest of my command of Vietnamese to try and figure out how much this guy wanted. The thing is, we were all under the impression we'd paid all the way through to Saigon, that was the whole point of the so-called "Direct Ticket." Flashes of the angry French woman at the Ha Tien travel station  came to mind. Oh boy. Here we go.

The three of us and The Money Man clearly did not understand each other. We kept showing him our receipts, and the other passengers, for their part, helpfully tried to bridge the communication gap, but they all clearly thought we were trying to get a free ride. Eventually the driver came to this realization too, at which point he stopped the bus, looked back at me and said with absolute finality: "NO!"

We looked around the bus. All eyes were on us, and a few people were even pointing to the door. The Money Man just stood there repeating, "You Go! You Go!" He threw our bags onto the road, and the bus started moving before he'd even gotten mine out of the hatch. I had to trot after it while pulling out my belongings as the Money Man abandoned his task and hopped back on.

I lost it. As the bus sped away I cursed a blue streak that would have done my ancestors proud.

So here we were. Somewhere in between Ha Tien and Rach Gia, on the roadside. The Chileans looked at me with wide eyes and a little bit of amusement, appealing to me for help since they knew I live in Vietnam, but also probably entertained by my display of true-blue American vulgarity. Nicolas offered me a cigarette.

What now?

OK, let's walk. We were close enough to make it back to Ha Tien in a couple of hours, also not ideal. Nicolas threw up his thumb to every passing vehicle, whizzing by with an explosion of horn-honking. No takers.

There was a small collection of huts not too far up the road, the standard roadside cafes with hammocks and plenty of beer. We approached one that had some friendly-looking people in it, celebrating the New Year with 333 (ba ba ba). They raised their glasses as we entered. One woman waved enthusiastically: Xin Chao! Hello! You!

I smiled, waved hello, and tried to spit out Happy New Year in Vietnamese before saying rather feebly, "Xe Om lam on? Ba?" Which I hoped conveyed that I needed three motorbike taxis, please.

They looked disappointed, partly because this meant they had to get up and do something, but also partly because, it seemed, they were excited to have foreigners enter their cafe, only to find we wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. On any other day, I would have been happy to sit and shoot the shit. But I was hot, bothered, dehydrated, and a long way from Ho Chi Minh, with about $15 in VND to my name. Nowhere along the way had we been able to change money--the border crossing is piteously small, as is Ha Tien town, and none of the banks were open. Tetgate.

The Cafe People looked at first as though they wanted to say no, but they couldn't. Here were three very dirty, weary, and helpless looking foreigners who, unbeknownst to them, just got kicked off a bus and were pretty pissed off on top of everything. One of the men started making phone calls, waving passing people down on motorbikes and explaining that we needed taxis. Some people refused, but eventually we found three. The man insisted we pay 50.000 each for a ride back into Ha Tien, and we were in no position to haggle. Nicolas and Richard were concerned the drivers wouldn't take USD. I of course said not to worry about it--I got this. They didn't look comfortable with that, either.

So we went back into Ha Tien and approached the Travel Company lady with open hostility. Nicolas: "They threw us onto the side of the road! We had to pay to come here! They threw us off!" The woman looked exhausted. I didn't feel sorry for her though. She made a few phone calls. Meanwhile, after about two hours of waiting, the Phu Quoc People are still in the office, sitting quietly at this point with tight faces, but taking the opportunity to yell intermittently at the Travel Company Lady the same things over and over again, presumably to make sure she didn't forget they were still there, and they were still unhappy.

{Interlude} Ha Tien actually has a pretty interesting, if devastating, history--it's not very big at the moment because it was all but destroyed by the Americans during the war as one of the supposedly busiest entry points of the Ho Chi Minh trail through Cambodia, and the insurgent VC in the Mekong area at the time. I don't mean to take a shit on Ha Tien as a whole. Had it been my choice to spend more time there, I'm sure I would have enjoyed it. {End Interlude}

You won't believe what happened next. Remember the "bus" to Can Tho that the fourth HCMC pilgrim boarded, but we were held back from? After about fifteen minutes of waiting, here comes that same bus, apparently having turned around after a half hour of traveling, realizing they had left people behind. Us. Told in no uncertain terms that this was not our bus. HCMC pilgrim #4, whose name I learned later was Irish Kate, waved at us, laughing. "What the hell happened to ya, then?"

At this point I was convinced that Travel Company Lady did not know her ass from her elbow.

Route, Kampot--->Ho Chi Minh City. The little loop outside Ha Tien denotes the  bus kickoff misadventure.

So we boarded the bus, again, which had filled considerably since last time with passengers, their baggage and their goods. At some point the bus ran out of luggage space, so it goes on the floor with baskets, plastic chairs, blah blah blah. I sat next to Richard with my knees to my chest for a solid two hours. Some other travelers that had been with us since Cambodia were plainly in better spirits--literally, they had been passing around a fifth of rum. After I explained our ordeal, they happily let us in on some of the action.

Here I will pause to talk about these Chileans. They were great guys. After I paid for the motorbike ride, they insisted on paying me back. After witnessing my roadside mini-breakdown, they asked repeatedly if I was OK. Of course, by the time we got on the (again, an assumption) proper bus, I was exhausted. Richard tried to chat a little bit, but he was self-conscious about his English I was too tired to try any of my Spanish. For as annoyed as they were, they were keeping an eye out for me, and later on, Irish Kate. Bewildered, but gentlemen through-and-through. Godspeed to them.

OK, back to this. After two hours, the minibus arrived in Rach Gia, the place I was hoping to avoid. I was certain that a bus to Ho Chi Minh from here would be another eight hours at least, putting us in Saigon at 3 AM. I was unable to locate my Vietnam SIM card, so I couldn't even call my landlady to alert her to this.

At this point, I came to the grim realization that this "Travel Company," whoever they are, had made no prior arrangements whatsoever for our tickets to Ho Chi Minh. They were just stuffing us onto buses willy-nilly, using some sort of twisted wisdom to assure us that this was how things were normally done. There's an obvious reason for not paying in advance--negotiating last-minute tickets usually gets them for cheaper, and the company can take more of that $20 to line their own pockets. Problem was, this was Tet, and nobody nowhere had any tickets for left for Ho Chi Minh. That's where everyone comes from, and that's where everyone returns. So even buying this ticket in advance, which I thought meant I'd actually have a seat on a bus somewhere, basically didn't guarantee anything thanks to these boobs.

Anywhere else in the world, this is unacceptable. After being herded from bus to bus, motorbike to motorbike, with no clarity or direction, it was even moreso.

But we bounced around Rach Gia--the entire bus, The Money Man for this one jumping off at various travel companies in Rach Gia to negotiate 4 tickets to Ho Chi Minh. The Can Tho travelers, as always, laughed and took it lightly. I looked around to Irish Kate, Nicolas, and Richard. We were all beyond game for this sort of thing. To make things worse, at every stop along the way, the bus was taking on more passengers to Can Tho, to the point where "seats" became "standing room only."

There was talk of getting a four-person taxi to Ho Chi Minh. We were done with these people, willing to pay whatever price to get the hell moving on. Here it was, sunset, and we had the entire Delta to travel before our destination. Miraculously, we found a place with some tickets. Irish Kate bought us all Banh Mi on the sidewalk while we waited for The Money Man to bark his instructions to us. I wrestled my bag from a pile under the legs of some poor Vietnamese teenager, who was a good sport about everything, at one point up to his forehead in shuffled luggage, but still managing to take the opportunity to practice his English with me.

Eventually the Can Tho bus sped away, the Rum Travelers waving merrily as they took off. Our (hopefully) last "bus" was to leave at 6:30. The driver claimed we'd be to Ho Chi Minh by midnight. After everything I'd been through that day, I found it absolutely impossible to believe.

The bus arrived, and we were finally on our way. Again. Total dark, by this point, the four of us bouncing in the back as the driver shot down the highway, narrow as a goddamn toothpick, at breakneck speed. I was trying to nod off a bit, being totally wiped, but the driver must have noticed me and took this as a cue to crank the cheesy Asian pop to 11 inside the bus. Try though I might, I couldn't cancel the noise with my ipod. To make matters worse, every time I reached a relaxed semi-sleep state, the guy would hit the worn-out brakes, making an awful, harsh noise that not only jolted me out of dozing, but also threw my heart into my throat thinking we were about to be hit. Truthfully, if I watched the road too much, I ended up freaking myself out. So I was content to stare at the dark ceiling, or sit with my eyes closed.

Then it was time to thank whatever spirit lives in the sky for small mercies. This bus, by some magical Mekong route hitherto unknown to me, managed to make it back to Ho Chi Minh at 12:30 in the morning. At this point I'd been waiting and travelling for almost 16 hours, and we still had a long-ish taxi ride to the backpacker ghetto, where thankfully everyone in our little travel party was going to.

Here I was, finally in my neighborhood, exhausted, dehydrated, with barely enough brain function to make polite goodbyes to my new travel friends. I couldn't believe I had started the day in a chilled-out, fresh-air, quiet river paradise, only to trudge slowly and with great confusion back into the chaos. With everything that had happened in that day, it seemed like I had known my fellow HCMC pilgrims forever, but we paid the taxi, collected our bags, and scattered to the winds.

The next night, en route to meeting another pair of friends, I ran into Richard and Nicolas again. They were happy to see me. Nicolas: "Have a beer!"

Damn right. Now, what were you saying about Santiago?