Travelling to Saigon, etc.

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A couple of things I forgot to mention from Eddie:
* 32 people die every day in Viet Nam due to traffic
* School breaks every day around 11 or 11:30 and the kids go home for lunch and some resting time before coming back at around 13:00 and stay until about 16:30

At 10:20 a minibus picked us up from our hotel and took us to what seemed to be a rather upscale version of a bus terminal. It cost 140,000 to Saigon and left at 11:15 (really it left a few minutes early...what if you were late?!). Apparently they leave every hour, and there weren't many people on our bus though there was an empty medicine cabinet and we did get free water bottles and wet towelettes from the stewardess lady. The bus ride was the usual: the driver honked the whole time as he was passing whoever, either in the right-hand lane or in the oncoming traffic's lane. We stopped at a place for lunch where all the buses stop and had about 30 minutes there and got to Saigon around 18:00 but sat in the rush hour traffic for a good hour before arriving to Bui Vien. The bus just stopped on the side of the road -- there was no terminal or anything but there was the option of getting off at other points, worthless to us as we couldn't communicate what we wanted: a cheap hotel. By 19:45 we had a hotel -- located in the back of the Tuyet Silk tailor shop but with a private room and bathroom and balcony for only $10! Incredible. Everyone else was offering much higher prices. It's not the most modern of places, but it does the job.

We tried a little bit to search for a nicer hotel with the same cheap price but it seems that around here they are not to be found. We did, however, book 3 things with a tour agency: the first is for tomorrow and is a combined tour of the Caodai temple and the Cu Chi tunnels ($7 excluding the 80,000 entry fee to the tunnels and lunch), the second for Thursday to a floating market on the Mekong Delta ($15...this is a new tour that not everyone offers, so I hope it's good!), and the third is an express bus to Phnom Penh (in the express you don't have to get off the bus at the border and they just do your $25 visas while you wait), but we don't know when yet. We have until the 20th on our visa, so we'll just go back on Saturday or Sunday to the office and secure the seats and date.

After we had dinner at a place almost right next door and it was good pasta! That's it and looking forward to tomorrow!

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Photos

Can you see?
there are goats in bags that were taken out from underneath

Passion in a barrel
wine from Chile in the convenience store at one of the gas stations -- incredible!

passion in a bottle
they had several other varieties too. really incredible store in the middle of nowhere