Textick

Friday, 9th December, Thanh Van Hotel, Hoi An, 9:30pm

It’s rare that you can say an eleven-hour bus trip was worth the destination. After the disappointment of Dalat, about 8 hours into our bus trip we started to feel the same indifference toward Hoi An. We told ourselves it was going to be just the same; hours and hours and hours on a bus for nothing.

The thing is, our bus travel has also been getting progressively worse, and this was the worst bus trip we’ve been on so far. It was 11 hours long, and the bus was small, the seats hard and the toilet breaks almost nonexistent. The driver honked his horn continuously, short, that we couldn’t sleep through, and the windscreen wipers made a squeaking noise that sounded like “you’re in hell, you’re in hell, you’re in hell.” The drivers spoke barely any English, and after about two hours into the trip they decided to stop so they could eat breakfast. Except they didn’t tell any of us they were doing this, so we all just sat on the bus, not realising we’d be there for over 15 minutes. We didn’t get another break for over three hours.

James and I read for most of the trip, gazed out of the window, listened to music, attempted to snooze (honk! honk! wake up everyone!!). It was raining and overcast, which did nothing for our mood, and, also, we left the hotel at 6 a.m., and everyone knows what an amazing morning person I am!!

Amongst our guests was a hard-edged Asian woman with her two daughters, and three Buddhist nuns, who smiled serenely at everyone and politely removed their canary yellow knit caps before sitting.

Our first stop was just after 11am, at a restaurant professing to be “A Beautyful Sea Pront Restaurant.” We had a good laugh over that. But our laughter died when a mangy dog staggered past, its neck bleeding and raw from repeated scratching. It kept stopping to scratch, but could barely stand up. We felt sick and quickly went back on the bus to avoid having to look at it’s flattened ears and matted fur.

Then suddenly the driver gave James and another man a shy smile. He indicated the key and made a pushing motion.

“Looks like it’s pushing time!” James said. A few people got off and shoved the bus a few metres along the road. It started easily. Even still, when James came back on we just stared at each other in disbelief. Our first bus had been luxury. Our second bus had been worse, but a little better. This was getting close to being a nightmare. That being said, it wasn’t unbearable at any stage. Just extremely irritating.

We drove on. I had the joy of seeing a man’s doodle, when he was peeing at the side of the road. He was shaking himself dry, and as the bus drove past he turned, penis still in hand, shaking it like he was waving at us passing. I turned to James and said,

“I just saw that man’s willy.”

The bus went on. I finished both my books. We distracted ourselves for about an hour, drawing caricatures of people we’d met on our holiday, with the other person having to guess who it was. The highlight was the Dutch couple with their Asian boy, and a bloke he saw in a dance-club who was tentatively flirting with a male escort, clearly contemplating first-time experimentation with another man (it was very awkward and nervous, hence why we all knew it was his first time). We irritated the bus by laughing a lot.

By about 3pm, everyone was restless, agitated and bursting to pee. A man lit up a cigarette on the bus, smoking it as discreetly as possible. We finally got given a pee break about 4pm. The man lit up another smoke. We got back on the bus, wedged our knees back under our chins. The man lit another cigarette around 5. Then between 5:30 and 6:30 he had two cigarettes lightly laced with marijuana. No one said anything.

As 6pm came and went, we started to worry about where exactly we were going. It seemed insane that we weren’t in Hoi An yet, but then buses here never go above 60 here (they can’t, there are just way too many scooters around). Then he saw a very obvious example of why buses go so slow. We passed about fifty scooters, all stopped, people milling around. The bus had to slow to a stop. It was pitch black, but we could still see the body by the side of the road, laid on his back and draped with a canvas sack. His feet stuck out the end, clean and still the warm brown colour of life. A mashed helmet lay beside the body. There was a truck. The bus fell silent. We drove past the truck. Under it’s front wheel was a mangled scooter. The body was a long way from the scooter’s final resting place. I felt ill. Nobody spoke. We drove on.

“That’s the closest I’ve ever been to a dead body,” James said.

“Me too,” I said. “Fuck.”

We stared out the window without speaking for about thirty minutes.

We attempted to figure out where Hoi An was, but got a panicked impression that we were going to Hoi An through Danang, and wouldn’t be there for another hour or more. I started to fume. But then the man sorted himself out, and said “6 minutes, not 60 minutes.”

So finally we got here, and we were taken to a hotel we pretended to have reservations at. We knew it was where Jamie was also staying, and we’d been given the business card at our hotel. It looked nice, and there was meant to be a swimming pool.

The man smiled when he saw us, and we just stared around the hotel, gob-smacked. There was indeed a swimming pool. In the middle of the hotel. And the hotel was open, built around the pool which was open. He led us upstairs, and showed us a $20 room. Out of our budget. But he made us a deal. $16 with breakfast, then tomorrow we move to a room across the floor, for $12. We agreed. This room is amazing, but way too big for us. There are three beds, and a bath. We’re happy to drop $5 and lose the extra bed and the bath. Plus, this room has no double bed, whereas the $12 will have. Anyway, I’m getting stupidly tired, but what I’m trying to say is that we madly love our hotel, and Hoi An is quaint and quiet, just how we like our towns, so it seems, at the moment, that the horrible bus trip was worth it. Tomorrow we’re getting up at 5am to go visit the Cham ruins nearby. It’s a huge tourist attraction, so we’re paying a bit more for an early tour, to miss the crowds. I’m hoping it’ll be atmospheric and intimate, rather crowded and touristy. We’re going on a bus that seats 6, whereas the later buses seat about 30. The smaller the group the better I hope! So I better go to bed and get some sleep so I can fully appreciate the ruins. We’re also going to try and find a good tailor tomorrow, since Hoi An is the city of cheap, but high quality, tailoring. We want a suit each for interviews in London, as well as a nice matching shirt.

So tired. Will post this now and (probably) write in extensive details about our trip to the ruins tomorrow.

Oh, and we’ve researched our Hong Kong plans, and they don’t look feasible, which we were expecting. It was fun thinking about it though!

This entry was posted on Friday, December 9th, 2005 at 8:13 am and is filed under Travel, Vietnam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.