Worst day on our trip so far

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Tuesday 10th April

All ready to get picked up in a car to take us to the bus to take us to the ferry this morning, when we were told, 'Sorry - we forgot to book your car'. They called another car quickly to see if he called get us to the bus in time, but no luck the bus had already left. The only other option was for him to drive us the whole 30km to the ferry at a cost of $25. (to us).

Not happy, but nothing we could do if we wanted to get to the ferry on time. We got over it pretty quickly as we are trying to stay as positive as possible and know it's pointless getting frustrated when there is nothing you can do to change things.

We got to our ferry which was not like the ones we had personally checked out the day before (like a mini cruise boat) but was like a submarine that had windows blacked out so youu could not see outside and felt like you were under water. The trip took 3 hours and wasn't a whole lot of fun. I just kept wondering what would happen if it went down. Basically, you'd be in a whole lotta shit.

We made it ok, and reached the port town of Rach Gia around 3.45pm. We had planned to get a taxi to take us to the bus station 7km away and then catch a bus to Can Tho - a town in the middle of the Mekong Delta about 2-3 hours away.

We were immediately approached by a couple of motobike (moto) taxis who again wanted to take us, but to a different bus station just up the road, as they said the main bus station was now closed (yeah, right). From what we had read, the buses here went to Saigon, not Can Tho, plus again, we could not all fit on motorbikes with our bags. We left them and found a meter taxi who was just about to take us to the correct bus station, when the moto drivers came up and started talking quickly to the taxi driver. Next thing we know, the taxi driver says he can't take us and drives off. Gav told the moto drivers to leave us alone, but they continued to follow us and successfully stopped every taxi we tried from taking us. By this stage there were no more taxis around, we had walked into town and where starting to get very pissed off as the moto guys would not leave us alone. We even went into the only hotel we could see to see if they could help us, and they even followed us in there and taked to the hotel guy, which ended all our hopes there. Gav felt he was ready to punch the moto guys (he didn't) as they literally would not go away.

After about an hour, we found a taxi who said he could drive us all the way to Can Tho for about $35. As soon as the moto driver started taking to him, his price went up to $45. We were at the stage where we did not know what to do. We knew we had to get to the right bus station, but nobody would take us. I was nearly in tears, and just felt totally hopeless. In the end we went across to the 'bus station' that the moto driver had said (he was still attached to us) which proved to be a booth on the road. We were told that yes, we could catch the bus from here to Can Tho at 6pm (we had first been told 5pm) and that it would be a minibus for about $8 each. We'd got to the point where we felt we had no other choice even though we knew we were being scammed left, right and centre. We bought the tickets and parked our bums on the side of the road for an hour waiting for our bus. Just after 6pm, the girl who sold us the tickets got on the phone and kept looking at us as she talked. She also looked very worried. Great.

A minibus going to Saigon had passed us a few minutes earlier, and now it did a u bolt and cam back and picked us up. We kept asking them 'Can Tho?' to which they said yes, yes. Nothing felt right about the situation at all. Off we went for about 10mins when we pulled into a petrol station to fill up. No problem, we were used to this. That was at 6.20pm. Then we sat there and waited. And waited. And waited. We asked what time we would be moving on. 7pm. Great. It was at this point that I actually started to cry - big wuss. By now we should have been sitting at dinner in Can Tho and I had just had enough. At 7pm, another minibus with 'Can Tho' on the front came and we were told to get our bags and change buses (just the 3 of us, as of course all the other locals on the bus were going to Saigon, just as I had expected) . I just sighed. Mia actually swore. (no idea where she learnt that from - I just ignored her) She then looked at me, patted my knee and sayed 'Hakuna Matata' which has been our moto so far on the trip meaning 'what will be will be'.

Funny isn't it, that the petrol station we had been waiting at was about 7km down the road from where we had first got on. The REAL bus station that everyone refused to take us to was, um, 7km from where we got on...

I actually started to feel more relaxed knowing that we were on our way to the right town on the right bus. No matter that we would be getting there at 9.30pm instead of 6pm.

Our bus driver was lovely and even though he was meant to drop us off at the Can Tho bus station, leaving us to face more moto drivers to get us to a hotel, he very kindly offered to drive us to our hotel. When we stopped at the bus station to drop off the other local that had been our bus, he even shooed away the moto touts and shut all the windows so we could not be harrassed.

He took us to a hotel we had picked from the Lonley Planet called Hotel 31. We were extremely thankful for his kindness, especially after the day we had, and tipped him nicely.

The hotel we had picked was $15 a night and had been written up in the LP as 'spotlessly clean' hence why I picked it. We did not expect to walk into a mansion of a room - one of the biggest and cleanest we have had so far on our travels. About 5 floors up with balcony overlooking the streets and view of the river.

A suprisingly lovely end to an absolute crap day.

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