I had fully a whole day to kill. My plane didn’t leave until shortly after midnight. I had several tasks I needed to accomplish and I was in the right neighborhood to get them all done easily.

Flat Again
The first task was to see how badly I messed up my rim and tire by riding on a flat in Phnom Penh. After breakfast I attempted to fix the flat again. The tube was messed up but fortunately the rim was okay. One of hostel (hostel, not hostile, they were very friendly) cats looked on while I used the sink in the shared bathroom in the hostel to look for leaks. The patch on the original hole was leaking around the edges and I found two more holes and pulled a very fine wire out of my tube. It probably came from a blown out truck tire. I was doing some of this work out on the cluttered sidewalk in front of the M.O.M Hostel & Cafe. The guy from the motorcycle shop next door saw me breaking a sweat airing up the tire and offered to blow it up with his motorcycle air compressor. Nice of him to offer but by the time he found the right adapter for his compressor hose I could have finished the job at least twice.

I left my bike locked up in front of the hotel while I ran my next errand a few blocks away. The next task was to change some more yen. The FX office was just a few blocks from the hostel. I changed some more yen to dong. To my great surprise I had less yen than I thought. I only had 3,000 yen. I thought that I still had at least one 10,000 yen note. I wonder if I accidentally used it to pay for something. It could happen given how many zeroes are in the local currencies of Vietnam and Cambodia. A 10,000 dong note and a 10,000 riel note have the same number of zeroes as a 10,000 yen note and they are more common. Anyway, If so, it is a sweet windfall for whoever received it. I also decided to make a cash withdrawal on my credit card. I had no problem using my credit card in Vietnam. Now I had enough walking around money for 1 day and enough to pay my bills.

When I got back it became clear that Velotta, the granny-geared goddess of bicycle riders, was balancing the karmic scales for the five days of good fortune that she showered upon me during my journey. The tire was flat again!

Box o’ Bike
The final, and perhaps, the most critical task was to get my bicycle ready to go on the airplane. That was easier than expected. Again, thanks to my guesthouse being so well located, I was less than a kilometer from an English speaking bike shop, Mr. Biker Saigon. I aired up my traitorous tire once again and said a little prayer to Rotunda, the trickster god of tires, that the air wouldn’t leak out before I reached the bike shop. I rolled up to the shop and asked for a box for my bicycle. He didn’t blink an eye at my request. For $10 dollars I got the box and packing service. Money well spent. 

With the afternoon to kill before I had to return to the shop to pick up my boxed bike I set off to do some sightseeing, on foot. I found walking in District 1 of Saigon quite pleasant. Not because it was the cleanest city with the most pedestrian friendly infrastructure. I liked it because the streets were lively and colorful. There was nothing odd or out of place about a foreigner walking around. Also, I was in no hurry to get anywhere. I got some lunch. I went to the plaza and paid my regards to the golden statue of the great leader, Ho Chi Minh, found a geocache, and got a ride in a rickshaw.

I returned to the bike shop about an hour before it closed to pick up my box o’ bike. I am glad I got there early. There was a misunderstanding about when I needed it and when I arrived it still wasn’t done. A call from the attendant to the manager cleared everything up. The bike mechanic took about a half hour to dismantle my bike and very neatly wrap it in bubble wrap and pack it into my box. When all was done the mechanic called a Grab (Asian equivalent of Uber) car for me. It took about 45 minutes to get to the airport. My flight didn’t leave until midnight so I had hours to kill. In fact, I got to the airport before my check-in time. I rearranged my bags and found a dark corner to audit the inside of my eyelids for visual information leaks. I am happy to report no findings.

Since, my luggage check-in experience at Narita was so expensive I didn’t pack anything else in my box. I brought my panniers on as carryon luggage. This backfired on me a little bit. My ticket had restrictions on carry luggage as well. When I checked in the woman working at the check-in counter warned me that they may weigh my bags at the gate so I should rearrange my belongings to somehow make them lighter. Perhaps she meant to say throw something out to lighten the load. Anyway this was ridiculous advice and I didn’t believe that anyone would weigh my bags at the gate. I was wrong about weighing bags at the gate. Sure enough there was a scale at the gate counter. It seemed like they were weighing bags at random so I was hoping I wouldn’t be picked. I was picked. They were very zealous about the weigh-in. Not only did they weigh my two panniers which were full to the brim but they also put my waist pouch on the scale. I was over the limit. They made me check the bags and pay a fee. Even with the fee to check in one pannier it still was less than if I put everything into the bike box.

Suspicious Box
Despite sleeping most of the way back I was still very tired when I arrived in Narita. I bought a ticket for the limousine bus to Tachikawa. I had about an hour to wait for the bus. I put the cart that all my luggage was on as near to some benches in the arrivals lobby as I could and then sat down to wait for the bus. I dropped off to sleep. While I was paying a brief visit to Dreamland all the other travelers who were also waiting on the benches and whose luggage was preventing me from putting my cart nearer to the bench left, leaving my cart alone in the middle of the thoroughfare. My lonely luggage captured the attention of the airport police. I returned from Dreamland to find an officer eyeing my luggage. I hopped up immediately and informed him that the bags were mine. When he asked me where I was I told him I fell asleep on the bench just a few meters away while waiting for the bus. Before I knew it Officer Friendly was joined by two more officers. I was surrounded by uniforms. I told my story again and showed them my gaijin card and my bus ticket. They determined that I and my big bicycle box were not a threat. I was free to go. I decided that it was time to leave the arrivals lobby. I removed myself and my non-threatening big bicycle box to the bus stop. Thus was I welcomed back to Japan.

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The Plan at Breakfast
The riding is over. I am preparing to leave Phnom Penh. I’m eating breakfast at the restaurant in the hotel and the plan for today is to go see the genocide museum maybe do a little shopping at the Russian market and catch a bus out of town to Ho Chi Minh City. 

Phnom Penh has the feel of a city that’s desperately trying to be modern. In many ways it’s similar to Tokyo; big buildings, lots of traffic, office ladies dress to the nines. But behind the big buildings are the street vendors, the trash and the poverty. It is clear that the U. S. dollar is a highly coveted commodity here. Many restaurants post prices in both dollars and riel. I don’t know which would give you a better deal. When you change money you lose a little bit of value. I haven’t been here long enough to know whether the dollar price is better than the riel price. There is always going to be a bit of rounding going on as there are no really small denominations in riel and nobody wants to deal with pennies, nickels, and dimes. I exchanged 400,000 Vietnamese Dong yesterday at the front desk here and they really gave me a bad deal. I realized it right away but there wasn’t much I could do about it. As soon as I had an Internet connection I confirmed that I lost 10 USD in value on a relatively small transaction. I felt they really didn’t want to exchange VND. They are really after USD. Perhaps, in the long run, it doesn’t matter, but I’m trying to keep this trip under budget. It also influences my overall impressions of the establishment’s honesty. I will mention this in my review. This place really could be nice with some more effort and pride. Given the Cambodian economy, 100,000 yen could make the place quite homey. 1,000,000 yen could make it a 5 star establishment. Of course, 100,000 yen is probably half a year’s salary for the average man in Cambodia. Perhaps there is a business opportunity for a careful foreign investor. Anyway, if I ever come to Phnom Penh I won’t be staying here again. There isn’t even a lake anymore. The government leased the land to a developer who filled the lake in and built buildings in its place.

When the Plan Falls Apart
What a crazy day! It started out okay but it pretty much went off the rails as soon as I checked out of the hostel. I stopped to chat with two other travelers who lounging in front of a neighboring hostel. We were talking about my bike and I was bragging how I had ridden it for 5 days without flats or mishaps when less than 30 seconds after leaving the gentlemen I noticed my back tire was low on air. I pulled over and aired up the tire. A few blocks later it was low again. I knew I had a flat. I stopped in front of the Science University and began to fix my flat. While I was working on it a guard came over to check me out. When it was clear to him that I was no kind of threat he smiled at me and disappeared. Flat fixed, I navigated my way to Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum. I payed a thousand KHR to officially park my bicycle. 24¢ to park. Not bad. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough riel or dollars so I decided to leave my bike safely parked at the museum and walk to the FX shop. I soon realized it was farther than I anticipated. There was a tuk tuk driver across the street. A great chance to go for a tuk tuk ride. It cost me 6,000 KHR to go close to my destination. I had pointed on the map to where I wanted to go. I think that because the Olympic Stadium dominated the map it distracted the driver from the pin drop on the FX shop. He didn’t take me all the way because I wasn’t clear enough about where I wanted to go when I pointed on the map. The FX office was near the Olympic Stadium which is a major landmark. He assumed I wanted to go there. No problem. It was now close enough to walk. 

I exchanged what I thought was a fair amount of Vietnamese Dong. The clerk handed me about 30 USD and few small riel notes. My first thought was to ask for riel only but it occurred to me that almost everybody prefers to get dollars over riel in Phnom Penh so I shrugged and excepted my greenbacks. 

Money in hand, I flagged another  tuk tuk. I picked a red one that was upholstered completely with astro turf and potted plants hanging in the windows. A real green design. I told him where I wanted to go repeating it several times. He quoted me a price of 8,000 khr and away we went. I thought I made myself clear about where I wanted to go. The Genocide Museum. Somehow the driver thought I meant some other museum it seems. After a while it felt like it was taking too long to get there so I checked the map and, sure enough, we were going on a tangent towards the palace. I told the driver he was going in the wrong direction. He did an amazingly tight u-turn. (Those tuk tuks can turn on a dime!) I suppose he wasn’t happy about the extra distance but it was his mistake. He didn’t charge me anymore than he quoted so I guess he was basically an honest guy. 

The Tuol Selong Genocide Museum
The Genocide Museum is a horrible place that everyone should visit. It is like the Genbaku Dome in Hiroshima or the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Memorial. It is a reminder how atrocious humans can be to each other. While it is not stated outright a little connect-the-dots leads one to understand the United States’ complicity in the tragedy. I will not go into details here. One should experience for themselves or at least do their own research. Start with these links. 

Unfixable Flat
I stayed later than I planned at the museum. I had planned to go the Russian Market to get some souvenirs. It was too late. I wanted to leave town by 1 pm so I could get to Ho Chi Minh City at a reasonable hour. According to various web sites the trip would take 6-7 hours. No time for souvenir shopping. I decided to go to the bus terminal. Despite patching my tire, when I came out of the museum it was flat again. I pumped it up hoping it would last long enough to get to the bus terminal that I thought wasn’t very far away. It didn’t hold. Cycling on the streets of PP is challenging enough but I find it preferable to pushing a bike through the chaotic crowds of tuk tuks, food carts, delivery motorcycles, street venders and other users. I stopped at a sandwich shop and ordered a sandwich for 1 dollar which I took “to go”. I put air in the tire a got another few blocks on me way before I was back to pushing it again. I really wanted to fix the tire again but the streets were too crowded and I was still hoping to get on a bus by 1. The bus agent was in the middle of Orresy Market and very hard to find. Looking around the ticket office I realized it could not possibly be the bus depot. It was just too crowded and too chaotic. The ticket seller confirmed this. I tried to pay for my ticket with my credit cards to conserve my dwindling dollars and riel but the charge was denied. I paid $12 from my dwindling supply of USD. It was 12:20 and the bus left at 2:00. Not the worst result. All the online sources put the bus ride at 6-7 hours. That would mean getting to Ho Chi Minh City at 8 o’clickish. Acceptable. 

Unfortunately, the terminal was farther away than I expected. It was back towards where my hotel was and further north still. Peddling a bicycle, maybe 20 minutes or so away. Pushing a bicycle – a lot longer. There was nothing else for it but to set out. I aired up the tire once again and set off. I thought If I put air in the tire every few blocks I could make it in time. The air was leaking out faster and faster. I had to push it or fix it. 

I finally got through the market which was crowded and chaotic. I was pushing as fast as I could. It became clear to me that I wasn’t going to make it by two walking. I came upon a Hindu temple and pulled out of the noise and bustle into the calm. I would take the 15 to 20 minutes needed to fix the flat again and even have time to eat my lunch afterwards. 

I pulled out my tools and took off my panniers, because of course it was the back wheel. Took off the wheel, levered off the tire and pulled out the tube. The patch I put on earlier in the morning had been obliterated. All that remained was a square of adhesive. I had used a self-adhering patch I got from Cycle Mode last month. I thought it would be okay temporarily. It just didn’t hold up. Okay. Lesson learned; don’t be lazy, put on a real patch. I did so. I put the whole thing back together. Fine. Now there is time to eat my lunch. While I was working on the bike an older monk came by. He said something to me which I didn’t understand. I said something to him that he didn’t understand. We smiled at each other and he went on his way. A good but, for all practical purposes, meaningless interaction.

Belly full. It was time to go. Oh no. The tire was flat again. Argh! Now there was no time to open up that can of worms again. I made another sub-optimal decision. Just ride it with a flat and damn it all with the damage it will do to my tube, tire and rim. Not to mention my soul each time I hit a bump, and there were many. I covered the distance but time was bleeding away. 

I didn’t have a properly functioning map. Without cell service I couldn’t search for anything except when I could connect to Wi-Fi like at the sandwich shop. As I got near the bus terminal I started to look for buses. I know, a no-brainer, right. Bus terminal = buses. I couldn’t see any buses or anything that looked terminalish. I stopped to ask for directions at a local shop. I managed to make myself understood somehow. The woman pointed me back the way I came. Okay I passed it up somehow. I went a few hundred meters and asked again. I was pointed in the opposite direction. By this time I am starting to panic. Time is leaking away. I turned around again. No sign of a bus terminal. Did the Mekong Express Bus Terminal fall into another dimension? Like the Emperor’s new clothes is it only visible to party members in good standing? Was I suffering from bus blindness? I finally found it. The buses were all in the back, out of sight from the road. Logical but not what I expected. 

I had made it in time with 20 minutes to spare. I was reassured that I would be able to put the bicycle in the cargo compartment but it would cost $10. Fine, an acceptable expense. One problem, no combination of riel and dollars in my wallet came to $10 and my credit card was denied again. There was a hairy faced occidental foreigner and his family sitting nearby. In the worse case scenario I could ask him to exchange some dong for me – maybe. Fortunately, I was able to pay in dong at a fair rate.  Whew. 5 minutes to 2. Mission accomplished. But no bus. After all that, it left an hour late.

Long Bus Ride and a Border Scam
If I had known, I could have tried to fix my tire again. If it is even repairable after all the abuse I gave it riding on it flat. I was glad to be on the bus with an E.T.A. of 9 pm. Still acceptable. I settled in for a long ride as the bus crawled through the city. I made the acquaintance of an Australian man traveling with his family; mom, dad (the same hairy faced chap in the terminal waiting room Ithat  considered borrowing or buying currency from) and his four kids. From him I learned why my credit card was rejected. The settlement company used by most businesses in this part of the world is Chinese and Visa and Mastercard just deny authorization as a matter of course. We swapped stories of our travels in Asia.

As the bus rolled through the benighted countryside, back along the road I had come on the day before the sun set and we were still on the Cambodian side of the border. It became clear to me that I was going to arrive in Ho Chi Minh later than I expected.  I wanted to notify my hotel but wouldn’t have cellular service until I got back to Vietnam. Meanwhile, the bus attendant , a stockily built fellow, came down the aisle checking all of our passports to make sure we had a proper visa (something that was already checked when we bought our tickets). He informed us that we would not have to pay anything on the Cambodian side to exit the country but there might be a 1 or 2 dollar charge on the Vietnamese side of the border for the entrance stamp.

After a rest stop another, skinnier bus attendant came through the bus checking our passports again telling us the same story. Finally, skinny bus attendant guy came through again repeating the process. I was still baffled and skeptical. After all, I didn’t have to pay any fee when I arrived at the Ho Chi Minh Airport. I didn’t pay anything extra when I was leaving Vietnam. I saw the list of fees at the land border crossing and I don’t remember there being a charge listed for any kind of entry fee other than the official visa fees.

We finally got to the border somewhere around 9 pm. The Cambodian border officer stamped our passports. There was even a sign posted that clearly stated that no payment was needed. So far the story held up. Next, on to the Vietnamese checkpoint. At the Vietnam checkpoint we had to unload our luggage to go through customs. So I followed the other passengers pushing my dirty and wounded Mini-V through the border station, the bus attendant once again informed all of us waiting in line that we would need to pay a dollar to get our exit stamp. Well, I was fresh out of dollars. I asked if I could pay in dong. The attendant told me 30,000. I wasn’t sure how much a dollar was in dong but I was sure his math was wrong. I handed the attendant my passport without any money in it. He was trying to get us processed in one batch. I think he was just adding to the confusion. 

After the passports were stamped Mr. Skinny would call our name and give us back our passport. When I got my passport back there was no stamp. The stamp “fee” was unavoidable. I wasn’t going to get screwed again with some ballpark exchange rate math so I pulled out my phone (I finally had cel service again.) and looked up the rate. 1 red blooded American dollar equals 23,000 dong and change. You better believe I was rounding down this time. I put 23,000 dong in my passport and put it back on the officer’s counter. I felt if anyone would accept a bribe in dong it was a hardworking, honest Vietnamese border officer. In a few minutes the bus attendant called my name again. My passport was lighter by 23,000 dong but adorned with a beautiful re-entry stamp. I think I could have gotten by with just 20,000 VND. Any amount to grease the uncertain good will between nations is worth it, right?. What a scam! Think about, a busload of about 30 travelers times how many buses. Each passenger being charged a dollar or two extra. Given the Vietnamese economy, a tidy little profrit that.

We finally rolled into Ho Chi Minh a little after 11 pm. A trip of 8 plus hours. It was only a few blocks to my hotel. At least, I planned this part out well. I pushed Mini-V through the late night revelers to my Hostel. M.O.M. Hostel & Cafe. A funny name but a nice place. Unfortunately, it was way past check-in time. Fortunately, a short e-mail message to the front desk unlocked the door before I had time to come up with a plan B. Unlike some of the other places I stayed in the room was prepay. I didn’t have enough dong now thanks to my donation to the border guards of Vietnam auxiliary fund. The clerk took my passport as insurance until I could exchange more cash the following day. The room cost about 5 dollars and I was about a dollar short.

Lessons Learned
1. Be more precise when giving directions to tuk tuk drivers.
2. Carry pencil and paper with you to write down prices and place names. It helps to avoid confusion.
3. Don’t change money at the front desk of backpacker hotels. They tend to use prodigious rounding skills to give themselves favorable rates.

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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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