THE BUS JOURNEY FROM HELL

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We went to the hotel to book a car for our sightseeing trip, but Mr Xuan kept trying to convince us to go on mopeds instead. One look at the weather was all it took to make up our minds. A day on the back of a moped in the pouring rain was not our idea of fun. Anyway with three of us it worked out cheaper to hire a car. After a traditional breakfast of noodle soup for me and fried noodles with chicken for Andy we set off on our trip in our comfy dry car. I was especially pleased to have the car when I saw the two French ladies disappear on the back of mopeds looking like they had been wrapped in bin bags.

We made our first stop in Hoa Lu - the ancient capital. We visited two temples, each quite similar in design. The walk between the two was full of persistent old ladies trying to sell us bananas and a man sitting on a buffalo for no apparent reason.

Next we were dropped off outside a very muddy car park and told to climb through the fence. We did this and came face to face with Chua Bai Dinh - a pagoda and temple complex of humongous proportions. Its not yet finished, in fact in places it is still a total building site. Thousands of Buddha statues line the inside of the outer walls. Many people touch each one on the way round which must take forever. There are also thousands of small glass cabinets set into the walls, each hold a statue of Buddha and many of them have money stuffed into them as gifts to Buddha. It was impressive even in its incomplete state so its going to be amazing when its all finished.

We then drove through small villages and rice paddy fields with the same rock formations as Halong bay. They looked even more striking on land, especially with the low mist surrounding them. The roads were more a collection of potholes than tarmac, and with suicidal dogs, chickens and buffalo wandering into the road in front of us we had to do a lot of last minute breaking. The narrow winding roads eventually led us to Mua Cave. We got out of the car and our guide pointed to a huge rock with steps to the top. "You climb 500 steps" he said pointing towards the peak which seemed so high that it was disappearing behind a cloud. We were all pretty tired so none of us were sure we were really up for all the climbing, but we were here now and had paid our entrance fee so we decided to give it a go. The steps were tough. None of them were even and some were twice the height of others. My little legs struggled with some of the really tall steps. After a few breaks along the way we finally reached the top. For our hard work we were rewarded with the most stunning views over the rice fields, rocks and rivers and it really was worth all the effort. The walk down the steps was possibly harder than the climb. The steps were getting slippery and walking down we could now see how far we had to fall.

Our final stop of the day was at Bich Dong - three beautiful pagodas set into a cave. This meant climbing more very slippery stone steps, but by now we were pros so another hundred or so steps was nothing.

Back at the hotel we enjoyed some more of Mrs Xuan's delicious cooking. This was followed by a very long five hour wait for our bus to turn up. Originally we all wanted to travel by sleeper train, but they all arrived at awkward times so we were forced to take the bus. We were promised comfortable beds, the latest technology and mod cons such as large and luxurious toilets on the sleeper bus so we should have nothing to worry about.

At 10pm our bus arrived. It was quite clear from the outside that this was not as advertised. A very angry man was in charge of the bus. He shouted at us to take our shoes off and put them in a plastic bag, pushed us up the isles and dragged us by the arm trying to get us to steal someone else's seat. After much shouting and shoving we all managed to find a space, but we were all separated. Andy's bed was under the rear seats in a row with 4 other blokes. Pete got a bed in the centre row and my seat was put in as an after thought above the toilet compartment. Because it was sat on the toilet compartment it was a foot higher than all the other seats. I’m only short, but no matter how I sat my head touched the ceiling and unlike all the other seats there was nowhere to stretch out my legs. The angry man was obviously getting some cash on the side as every bit of available floor space was taken up with local people wrapped in a blankets. I have to say they looked more comfortable than me! All the extra people meant that there was no way for me to climb out of bed unless I climbed on to my neighbour or down the toilet door, neither of which were ideal. The people sat next to me told me that Mr angry had been the same since they got on the bus in Hanoi. I pulled my hood around my head and tried to get some sleep - 10 hours to go!

It didn’t take long to realise that sleep would not be easy. The lights were all switched out to encourage sleep but the bus driver was not the smoothest of drivers. He also had a passion for beeping his horn as often as possible - he had a very loud horn. Erratic noisy driving and a steady stream of people turning up to use the toilet cupboard underneath me throughout the night are not things normally associated with drifting off to sleep.

Andy also had a terrible seat, but at least he got chatting to his neighbour. Unlucky for him he had been miss-sold a ticket. He had been told he would arrive in Nha Trang in 14 hours but this was an impossibility. Unfortunately he had not worked this out until he had bought his ticket and got on the bus. Now he was part way through a 36 hour coach journey from hell - there’s always someone worse off than yourself!

Half way through the journey the bus driver swerved quite severely. This caused Andy’s neighbour to wake up suddenly, throw his arms around Andy and scream “OH MY GOD!!” at the top of his voice. Once he realised what he had done, and that we were not in fact all about to die, he removed his arms from around Andy’s waist looked at the floor and apologised quite embarrassed. This irreversibly changed the dynamics of their new friendship somewhat because they didn’t really speak afterwards.

The large and luxurious toilet that we were promised turned out to be a stinking wet cupboard with a door that wouldn’t lock. We stopped at one point so the staff could have a cup of tea. During this time a lady got on the bus to hose the toilet down. This included the walls, ceiling, door and most helpfully of all, the toilet roll. When anyone wanted to use the toilet there was a rather fetching pair of communal plastic slip on sandals so that our feet didn’t get too wet….. Delightful.

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