Good Morning Vietnam!

Right now I'm in Can Tho - a fairly large city in Vietnam situated on the Mekong Delta. But before I get into thoughts about Vietnam, let me tell you about how we arrived here.


Early May, Bianca and I arrived in Hanoi after a 30 hour mission by bus and train from the southern tip of Laos. We left Laos at 7:30 pm on a local bus destined for the Vietnam border at Lao Bao. This bus was loaded to the ceiling with approx. 6 tonnes of rice from Thailand packed in sacks labelled sugar (I know right?), and a whole bunch of other stuff and people. Ballads of love and loss spewed sporadically from broken speakers at max volume. A shrine with twinkling christmas lights adorned the front of the bus, and there was just enough space on top of sacks of rice, and between parcels for me to hug my knees to my chest while my feet hung out the window of the person who was technically supposed to be sitting in front of me, but was pretty much on my lap. There was only space on the bus for about 20 people (and I don't mean seats, I mean storage space), 2 of which were women from the Czech Republic. The close quarters and ear splitting bursts of noise from overhead were enough to finally drive one of these women to a fit of rage at about 2:30 in the morning. Bianca and I finally burst out laughing at our situation, busted open some chips and soy milk, and made friends whith the less-than-impressed women. At 4:00 am we stopped 1 km from the border, and were told that we would wait until 6:30 for the border to open. Bianca and I then fell asleep. Half an hour later we were woken up by a Vietnamese man hurriedly asking for our passports and 30 000 kip (approximately 4 Canadian dollars). Everyone else had left the bus. Awesome. Naturally I said no. Why would I pay some guy to steal my passport while I'm trying to cross a border? He starts talking in anxious broken english about how the border is far away, and that the bus is leaving at 7:00 with or without us. If we try and take our own passports to the officials, we will be too slow and get left behind. He'll do it for us. Re he he heally batman. Seeing as there was still plenty of time, and being about as willing to hand over my passport as I would be to drink motor oil, I went in search of a second opinion. This is how we met Tony.

Tony is an expat who has been living in Vietnam for about 8 years, but can't stand the place. He doesn't trust most of the people, and he doesn't like that young, beautiful women go for ugly, rich foreign men. He stays, however, because he can make money here. He knows when people are trying to rip him off (which is pretty much all the time), and he knows his way around the wall of Communism. He kindly shared some advice with us on the night of our border crossing, and has since proven to be a nice friend to have in the country.

So we handed over our passports complete with 'rush job' money, and bought some local currency at a good rate. Side note- Tony didn't seem to think that Vietnam needed to be importing rice- especially not just 6 tonnes of it on a tin can bus.

So I ordered a strong cup of coffee and a beer, because it was 5:00 in the morning, and I was sitting on suspicious parcels at the Vietnam border without a passport.