The Pre-Roll: Planes and Buses
2019/12/14
Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh City
Just Getting to the Start
The day started way too early. I had to be at the Palace Hotel in Tachikawa by 5 am to catch the shuttle bus to Narita. My wife gave me and my big box a lift. I loaded it into the car the night before so I could get a few more minutes of sleep. I slept most of the way to the airport so the time went by quickly.
At the check in counter I hit the first snafu of my trip. I was informed by the check-in clerk that my big box of bicycle was going to cost me extra. I was expecting that. What I wasn’t expecting was how much extra. It was about twice as much as I was told when I called the airline. The box was 27 kg. Before the clerk told me how much extra I was feeling pretty good about how well I had done keeping the total under 32 kg. That feeling of euphoria disappeared quickly when I heard how much I would have to pay. I couldn’t even pay by credit card. At this point there was nothing I could do about it. I paid in cash.
How Much is Enough
That led to my next challenge. I had only withdrawn 60,000 yen the day before and part of that was already gone. How much currency should I exchange? When I was planning the trip I was keeping track of how much everything would cost and making estimates when I didn’t have actual numbers. My goal was to keep the entire trip under 100,000 yen including airfare. The biggest single expense being the airplane ticket and visa fees which were paid in advance. So how much should I exchange? I had to take into account that if I am able to stick to my itinerary I would be spending a couple of days in Cambodia. I would need some Cambodian currency too. I don’t even know what Cambodian currency is called let alone the rate. I did a little back-of-the-envelope calculation and decided on 20,000 yen for starters. I wanted to hold back some yen for later. While I was doing all of my desktop planning it didn’t occur to me to check if I could get Vietnamese and Cambodian currency at Narita. It turns out that Vietnamese Dong is available but not Cambodian mystery script. No worries. I will cross that bridge (or border) when I come to it.
I changed 20,000 yen and instantly became a millionaire. I received 3.6 million dong in exchange. A wad of bills so thick I had trouble closing my wallet.
The airline for this trip is Viet Jet Air. A budget airline for sure. The Viet Jet Air gate didn’t service the really big jumbo jets. The planes don’t taxi all the way to the gate. You have to take a shuttle bus from the gate to where it is parked out on the tarmac. A new experience for me. Even smaller jets seem really large when you are on the ground level looking up at them.
I was lucky. I got a seat by the exit so I had plenty of leg room.
I arrived in Ho Chi Minh famished. When I bought my ticket I didn’t realize my airfare didn’t include a meal or even an in-flight movie. I munched on trail mix and drank some water. I’m glad I packed trail mix. At the time I didn’t know how often it would be a lifesaver during this trip. Outside the airport, I went to the first restaurant I saw, a Pho restaurant called Big Bowl. The sign boasted that it was made with wagyu (Japanese beef). I don’t know if that’s true or not but it was tasty, nonetheless.
Taxi Ride
My original plan was to catch the yellow bus from the airport to the center of the city and from there get a taxi to the Futa bus terminal. When I saw that the yellow bus didn’t have a cargo bin underneath I decided it would be more efficient and easier to just get a taxi all the way to the bus terminal.
I was approached by one man who was asking 450,000 dong. I turned him down because I was looking at a sign that said taxi ride for 90,000 dong. I also remembered that there was a warning about unsanctioned taxis that would rip you off. I didn’t take the 90,000 dong taxi. I eventually settled on a 300,000 dong taxi. I don’t know why I didn’t even try for the cheaper taxi. Maybe I was just tired. There was a guy offering me and my big box a ride. I think the box was the deciding factor. I knew it wouldn’t fit in just any taxi and since the guy saw the size of my luggage I felt confident that he would be able to find a taxi that fit. Additionally, he wrote down the amount on a receipt so I felt that I probably wouldn’t be hit by any sudden and inexplicable inflation once I got in the car.
The driver didn’t speak any English but the man that set up the ride spoke a little English and I told him that I wanted to go to the Mien Tay Futa Bus Terminal. Despite this, I was still worried that they driver didn’t know where I wanted to go. We spent the majority of the trip trying to communicate. He had an app on his phone that he would speak into and it would translate his words into English. I could speak into it and it would translate my words into Vietnamese. Very convenient. This was my first time on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City and they seemed so crowded and chaotic to me. I was worried that the driver was going to hit someone every time he took his eyes off the road to look at his phone. At one point, we had a moment of levity when the app on his phone failed to transcribe his words correctly. The English translation said something like “Lin’s head is crazy”. I assumed that his name was Lin. It was clear there was an error but I couldn’t figure out for the life of me what he was trying to say. The driver must have realized that something had gone wrong from the confused look on my face. He looked down at his phone. He must have seen how crazy the transcription was because he started to laugh. I did too. The core of the communication hurdle was that the ticket booth for the bus and the actual terminal were not it the same place. When we were both satisfied that we understood each other I was free to watch the scenery as we drove through town. I was glad that I was not starting my bicycle ride here in Saigon.
We eventually arrived at the ticket seller. Mr. Lin offered to wait for me while I bought my ticket. That was nice of him. I admit the thought crossed my mind that this was a ploy to get more money from me. But I had no viable option. I negotiated the ticket transaction and returned to the car without any mishaps. He drove me to the actual terminal. There was an entrance fee for entering the terminal lot. It was my understanding that I would have to pay this and I was fully prepared to. When the time I see Mr. Lin struggling in his mind over how to tell me but then I saw him give up. Perhaps, he decided that the effort to communicate the request was not worth the result. Thus, I arrived at Mien Tay Futa Bus Terminal.
On the Bus
The Futa Bus Company runs highway buses from Ho Chin Minh City to many other cities in Vietnam. The bus terminal was a large and very busy place. The bus number was written on the back of my ticket. I was told the bus would be leaving a 5 pm. The trip from Mien Tay to Soc Trăng is a 6 hour journey so I was beginning to get concerned about my hotel reservation. Especially as 5 pm rolled around and there was no sign of my bus. While I waited I bought a soft drink from a woman selling drinks and other stuff in front of the waiting room and I bought 2 loaves of french bread from a man who was working his way through the bus stop selling bread out of a big plastic bag. The bread seemed like a particularly good deal.
The bus finally arrived. Futa buses are like no other bus I have ever ridden on. The buses are clean and air conditioned but they do not have a bathroom on board. That is not the exceptional part. They are unique in that they do not have regular bus seats. Instead they have something that resembles bunk beds. You cannot fully lie down but you can recline with your legs straight out in front of you or you can lay down with your legs bent. All in all it was reasonably comfortable. The only downside is that I had a top bunk which was very close to the ceiling of the bus and put me in danger of going into a coma from a head injury every time the bus hit a bump. You can see what the inside of the bus looked like if you watch the video or look at the photo gallery.
The despite leaving a half hour late we got to Soc Trang faster than I expected. Fortunately, the walk from the bus terminal to my hotel was only about 500 meters. At just a little bit before 11 pm there were few people out on the street to see me humping my 27 kg big box along the street to my hotel.
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