~ to Can Tho skirting Ho Chi Minh City ~
On the morning of Tuesday August 10 I head out of the Dong Phoung Hotel on Hoang Hoa Tham Street, Vung Tau. The Vung Tau bus-station is on Nam Ky Khoi Nghia just past the market.
The local bus is an interesting ride up the 'under reconstruction' highway to Bien Hoa on the main Saigon/HCM-Hanoi drag. The traffic then gets ludicrous. Heavies mostly...trucks 'n buses. Vietnam's in the thoes of major development after all. The roads can't keep up. Even maintaining existing ones lags behind. Tolls are everywhere. They can be big money-spinners. But there are bigger. So not much of the current development has resulted in more user-friendly transport infrastructure. Or wait on, hasn't it?
Heading into Saigon on the main road from Bien Hoa's slow going. I'd bought this ride to Can Tho for VND70k with the distinct impression that Saigon wasn't on the menu. There's always the distinct possibility, due to the language barrier, that this impression is a distinctly false one. Seems so wedged between trucks and other buses on the road into Saigon. Hang on a minute! We're sidling right into quieter traffic. Before long we're pulling up at a tollgate. Then like the magic only real money can buy, we're on the still-pristine 50-plus-kilometre freeway that now skirts north round the 12-plus-million-people/motorbike city named in victorious honor for Bac Ho. Fantastic, wonderful. A freeway. Memories of Malaysia. Then, after the freeway's over it's back to the mostly two-lane Saigon-Can Tho highway. Back to the present. We have a welcome piss and refreshment stop. There are buses of many companies continually pulling in and out. Now it's over a main branch of the Mekong on the 'John Howard' bridge near Vinh Long.We roll off another new bridge and enter the precincts of Can Tho. It's been a mostly enjoyable, interesting and reasonably comfortable 7 hour bus trip from Vung Tau. I somewhat strangely let myself get dropped somewhere in the outskirts of the city. There are distinct language misunderstandings going on...again. It's dark now and raining too...and I haven't got a clue where the riverfront I know is, or how far I am from it.
I've been to Can Tho before...but never out here. Coming in over the newly-opened bridge goes some way to excusing my current disorientation. I've got 25plus kilos to lug around. No panic. I rely once again on my nomad's instinctive good sense of direction. I walk with a sense of purpose, umbrella-protected back to a major set of lights. I hang a left and I walk freely and surely down towards the riverside Can Tho I know...down past the university. I'm going in the right direction. Probably I've covered about 3 kilometres. In the end though I have doubts. No one I meet can speak any English.
When I'm unknowingly about 500 meters from the riverfront I meet a 'xe om' guy ~ a motorbike taxi. He's a guest house tout who speaks my language. He takes me for ride! I pay VND10k to a place I know. It's full though so I end up in a related guest house. It's just around the corner. I have a clean, twin single bed room up on the third floor for VND100k. All's well. It's near the centre of the riverfront I know. Up from the morning market. A bigger place than I thought though, Can Tho, the Mekong delta's big overgrown river town.