It starts out at 8:30 pm Friday night when you find out you are leaving at 1:30 am for Halong Bay. I don’t start packing until 11:00 pm because there’s no point in going to sleep for a few hours.
At 1:00 am we try to call a taxi to come and get us, but they speak zero English and hang up on us. We get on Grab (their version of Uber) and you find a guy who picks us up.
By 1:30 we arrive to an Italian restaurant that is next door to the place where the bus tickets were bought at. The bus is there, but the driver is asleep in one of the seats.
At 2:15 Daniel wakes up the driver. He lets us on the sketchy bus that is wet from something and has about the leg space for a small child. We then find out that the bus isn’t leaving until 5:00 am. We get as comfortable as we can and fall asleep.
4:30 am we arrive at another bus station to pick up other people.
Around 5:15 we are woken up and kicked out of the bus. They remove all of our bags and we are sitting at a random bus station very confused…
It‘s now 5:30 am and we are now laying in the luxury of a new bus. It has lots of leg room, blankets, curtains that close, and lots of room for activities.
Around 9:30 I push the call button in my nook to google translate to the bus guy if we were stopping soon. A few minutes later the bus pulls to the side of the road on a mountain for everyone to use the restroom. Cortnie and I adventured into some bushes to pee. Such an interesting time that I decide the best idea is not to drink anymore water.
By noon we stop at sketchy food place numero uno. Some plates of unknown meats and rice were ordered, so I skipped this meal. They saw we were American and asked us for money even though the rest of the bus wasn’t paying.
Some hours of honking and crazy driving later it’s now dinner time. Again sketchy food stop two included plates of unknown were ordered. I settled for a plate of white rice.
By 6:30 pm we were on the road again for the rest of the evening. I watched some Friends, read a book, and fell asleep to worship music.
7:00 am (the next day) I was woken up by a man yelling “toilet toilet.“ I was disoriented, confused on where we were, and what I was doing on a bus. I hurried off to the toilet while a few moments later the bus driver was honking to leave. Here in Asia they don’t mess around with timing.
At 10:45 you make your final bathroom / breakfast stop. I felt so out of it at this point I stay in my nook. I eat a few Oreos, read the end of Exodus, and watch some more Friends episodes.
At 12:30 pm on Sunday, I was ready to get off this bus. I was tired of the honking, the driver smoking without opening up a window, and boy did my back hurt.
At 12:50 pm we arrived in Hanoi. We headed in a very expensive taxi ride to our hostel. It was clean and had a nice bathroom, praise the Lord. Rob, Cortnie, Daniel, and I took another expensive taxi ride into town for massages, Starbucks, and burritos.
It is now 12:15 am on Monday while I am writing this. At 5:00 am we will take a taxi into the city to catch a bus to Halong Bay.
For Christmas, we’ll celebrate with a few teams in Halong Bay! Praise! And then at the end of the week we do all of this again to head back south to Ho Chi Minh City.
Welcome to the World Race!
