Like Sardines,

we were packed in as tight as possible is several vans. It already sounds like we (whoever we are) were being kidnapped, but in fact, we were not; we were being transferred to the bus station. A young guy came from around the corner to the guest house where Jill and I were waiting. He told us to "hurry, hurry, hurry" and get to the bus. We followed him, and we ended up on some side street, where a minivan that was packed-full of people was waiting. They tried to put my stuff in there. Nope, sorry, I'd like to be in the same vehicle as my belongings. Another van showed up, with one spot, they tried to get me in it and Jill to take another one. Sorry. No, again. We'd rather not be split up by some strangers in vans that were, hopefully, headed to a bus. So, they wait for the third van to show up. Jill got the seat, I got the gutter between the seat and where the door track was. Makes perfect sense, right? All while this was happening, these men were so incredibly rude. It was a pretty bad experience, but of course, my travel buddy and I made the most of it. After about 15 min (maybe longer), we ended up at the Camel Bus Company office, where we exchanged our receipt for the real set of bus tickets we paid for and proceeded to the sleeper bus, where we were yelled at to hurry up. Once we got on, there weren't any bed/seats next to each other, so we split up. I was towards the front, and Jill was unfortunately towards the back where, well, I'm sure she'll write a post about it. Back to these "bed/seats". They were clearly made for people with a maximum height of 5' 1". I'm 6'. This obviously doesn't work for me. I had to practically put my knees up by my ears to "stretch out". I constantly felt like I was in some sort of strange erotic position...for 12 hours. I read for the first 2 hours, then proceeded to stare out the window, bewildered by the neon lights that draped this city just south of Hanoi. Then, I turned my head towards the TV, where they were playing some cheesy Vietnamese romantic pop songs (which sounded like they came from the early 90s). Ahh, I thought, this kinda has a comfortable familiarity to it. And then, it had all the familiarity I needed, and so much more when I drifted my head once more a little farther below the TV to stare at the road where it was apparent how insanely fast (and insanely bad) this guy was driving our bus. I decided there was a fourth option to stare at, a better option: my eyelids. So, I slept in and out every hour until we reached Hué, the ancient capital of Vietnam. We got off the bus, got our ticket ripped out (we were going straight past Hué) and got shoved on another bus that was headed to Hoi An (our destination). Oh, there was also a fight that broke out there, too.

We chatted with a Croatian man who was traveling with his mother for awhile and also with our new travel partner, a girl from Manhattan. This is definitely one of the perks of traveling by the perils of this form of transportation: meeting people...and an American, nonetheless. You don't run into them that often. Well, I'm in Hoi An, and it's absolutely fantastic. We'll probably stay here for a few days given how relaxed the atmosphere is. There's a beach, which is 5k away (we get there by a beautiful bike ride through rice paddies and a river...more on that later), an "Old Quarter" which is very quaint with amazing food. Yeah, you know, I'm just gonna save this all for the next post on Hoi An. Well, I'll just say one more thing about it. It's the tailoring capitol of the world. I think I might get a shirt made.

Talk to you later,

Garrett