OH, the joys of long distance transportation. Never again will I complain about a long car ride or bus ride…8 hours? Nothing. 16 hours? Piece of cake.
We have arrived in the city of Da Nang! This bus ride was the closest thing to what I would imagine the Knight Bus in Harry Potter must have felt like (minus the talking shrunken heads).
Before the long bus adventure even BEGAN, we first crammed 15 Racers with ALL of our gear onto a local bus that was already packed full of Vietnamese students. We squeezed in like sardines with the help of a few students who kindly look care of my guitar and dealt gracefully with a few backpacks in the face.
We slowly gained more room at each stop with students leaping over seats in order to get to the door in time before the bus peeled off. We arrived at the bus station just in time to sprint off to then bathroom before finding our sleeper bus.
Sleeper bus? You may wonder, what is a sleeper bus? Well, we first were asked to take off our shoes as we got on the bus and place them in little bags to carry down the narrow isle with us to our “seats”. Our “seats” were recliner chairs stacked neatly in three rows with a bottom level and a top level. It really was just for sleeping**. As we got settled, we were passed water and asked if we would like to hear disco music to start off the bus ride… nice.
I would like to take this moment to thank my travel doctor for recommending sleeping medication.
**I would highly recommend that basketball players, or really anyone taller than 5 ft 6 to avoid riding in sleeper buses as my legs were barely small enough to straighten out in the coffin-esk foot space provided.
Our bus proceeded to stop about every 3 hours or so for the occasional bathroom break on the side of the road or (my personal favorite) a tire stand. The bus was kind enough to provided us with fashionable sandals to wear around during the rest stops, so I did not have to do anything more than step off the bus into the provided sandals in a blurry haze of half sleep.
23 hours later, we pulled into Da Nang and thanks to our guides, found our hotel. Not feeling much like laying down after sleeping 23 hours away, we set off to explore for dinner and not ONLY found a delicious spot, but a ballroom dance studio right across the street where we joined in with about 50 Vietnamese dancers as they warmed up and then started dancing the cha cha.
Let me tell you… those Vietnamese dancers can move! We were given a few extra pointers and a homework assignment to work on loosening up our hips so hopefully the next time we join in, we will be able to keep up with the best of them 🙂
Life lesson learned?…. 23 hours in a sleeper bus sure makes you want to move your hips. The Lord ALWAYS knows what you need!
