Rob and Anna's travel adventure

Anna's entry:
Crossing the border was the easiest, almost unusual. We took a bus from Phnom Penh (Cambodia) all the way to Ho Chi Minh City/Saigon (Viet Nam). The bus conductor collected a stash of passports of the entire bus just before we crossed the border at Moc Bai, we walked to the passport control, and the same stash of stamped passports was handed over back to the passengers. Passport control officials did not even look at the owners of passports. Then they sent us to the x-ray machines to check the luggage, but since no one was standing at the machines, I didn't bother, and walked right through. Yepp - quite a security at that border.... We arrived to Saigon in the afternoon, and as soon as we stopped of the bus, a bunch of touts jumped at us trying to sway us to their hotels so they can earn their commission. We sent them away, and went on a search of our place to stay. We found a hotel not listed in the guide book, which we've been trying to do trying to avoid all the tourist crowds. We found a nice room, on a quite street, right in the center. Pretty cheap, about $10 including breakfast for two, plus satellite TV, fridge, etc. Saigon felt different, even after busy Phnom Penh. Aggressive motorcycles everywhere, blocking pedestrian ways, crosswalks, streets, street signs, etc. Obviously, pedestrians are second class citizens in Saigon. We learnt how to maneuver our bodies, and a few times run for our lives trying to cross busy streets. We found a few cheap eats in our neighborhood, including tasty kebabs for $1; and delicious curry escargot/snail soup for about $0.60 cents, good luck finding the latter in the U.S. - you'd be lucky if you found it in the gourmet French restaurant for about $30. I must admit I had no idea what I was eating in that unusual curry soup, but it tasted great, and when asked, the lady cooking the soup on the street told us "snails". We came back to that stall again the next night for more "curried snails". Rob and I did a lot of walking in Saigon despite of the annoying aggressive motos everywhere. We visited a lot of Chinese pagodas in the neighborhood called Cholon, where we also wondered off the beaten track to some street markets to try more of unusual soups. I must admit, trying different local specialties became one of the past times for us, especially when it's cheap. Once we tried going to a recommended restaurant where former President Clinton once ate at, but were disappointed with the food, price, and service (they charged even for a napkin) - so we resumed our culinary endeavors back onto the streets and street stalls. We tried to get away from the touristy stuff as much as we could, to get a more authentic feel of Saigon, it was difficult, but somewhat possible. On one of such walks we ended up in the slums along the Saigon River, where one of the locals was either asleep, or simply dead laying half body on the sidewalk, the other on the busy street. Several people were selling something right next to him, nobody seemed to care. OK, business as usual we thought... We spent a little more time then planned in Saigon, and it was time to move on. Little we knew of the memorable road trip coming up to Bao Loc. Later on I would call it "an attempted highway robbery"...

Bao Loc and Dalat, Central Highlands
Extortion on buses is a way of travel here?
Anna's entry:
I am trying to figure out why I do not feel very happy here, in Viet Nam... It could be because we have been traveling for quite a few months, and have seen and experienced a lot of great things before Viet Nam, perhaps, we feel saturated with this part of the world? I thought about it, and it still does not feel like the right explanation. I think most likely the reason is how we are treated here. I think people's attitude is the big part....
Surely, there are a lot of wonderful helpful friendly welcoming individuals, and that makes all the difference in the world for us, but there is another side of Viet Nam that makes me want to run away from here. One example would be the long distance buses, where we constantly get extorted by conductors and drivers. No matter if we have purchased the tickets with clearly printed price, they want more money - any reason goes here, our backpacks are too big, our language is too English, our hair color is too light, our nationality is too foreign, etc. We both are sick of it. We have traveled thousands of miles, we have faced similar discrimination by simply being foreign, but in Viet Nam it simply feels like extortion, and anything goes here, including intimidation. The most recent example was our travel from Saigon to Bao Lac. The trip started well at first - we were looking for a bus station, one kind local lady offered us to help - she couldn't speak English, but she motioned us to follow her. She went out of her way to bring us to the right place, and made sure we knew where to get started. We returned the next morning to board the bus. The only option available was a mini-van. We boarded with a few other local passengers, conductor took our tickets and we took off. About 20 minutes after we departed, on the highway, the so called "conductor" motioned us for more money. We showed him our tickets and said No. He couldn't speak English, but he kept pointing to our backpacks, and demanded more money. We firmly repeated again No. In his gesture he showed, that if we don't pay more, he would throw our bags out of the window - Rob showed him a universal gesture of an unhappy face and thumbs down, and he left us alone for about 40 minutes. Then, a mini-van pulled out to the shoulder of the highway, in the middle of nowhere, the driver came to us, and began demanding more money. We showed him paid tickets, and categorically refused to pay more. Our communication began escalating, the drivers attempted to grab our backpacks stored under the seats, but I leaned towards him and softly slapped his hand. My response puzzled him for a moment, but then he began spewing out something in Vietnamese (probably cursing). Remembering an advise I've read in a travel book, I raised my voice and started yelling back at him, trying to attracts the attention of other people - that way the confrontation was put in the open, in hopes that other passengers would get clued in a potentially uncomfortable and dangerous situation. They sure did - passengers and other people standing on the highway quickly made a circle around our area of confrontation, now the driver was put in the position of some explaining to do. Though the passengers and on-lookers couldn't care less to help us, this situation made the driver and conductor realize that intimidation and coercion will not work easily with us. If they wanted to throw us or luggage in the middle of the highway, they would have to fight in the open, with dozens of eyes watching them. The driver continued cursing, but eventually got into the van, and began driving again. We had three more hours to our destination, and Rob and I wondered what we had gotten into, and what would be the outcome of this intimidation. We prepared for several possible scenarios - more intimidation at the end of the journey, corrupted police involvement, or simply physical outcome. We decided that we would pay the extorted sum at the end if that would mean we could leave unharmed. Three hours slowly passed, and about 100 km, later we finally saw a highway sign Bao Loc. We knew we would need to plan our exit. The exit door was blocked by another passenger, and our backpacks were stuck under the low seats... Luckily, we over-heard another passenger asking for a stop, and we decided to make our move. It worked, we were free from the extorting van driver and conductor! They got out of the van, but realized there was nothing they could do about it. Where we got off, there were a few local moto taxi drivers standing - the extorting driver told them something about us, but when the driver and the van left, we told the taxi drivers our side of the story. One of them showed us thumbs up for not giving-in into this highway racketeering, and others were nodding at us and smiling. At that moment I knew we finally were safe. We began walking along the road looking for a place to stay, a few locals welcomed us by waving to us and shouting friendly hello. We settled in in a very nice room, it felt like a penthouse (for only $9, yes, nine USD). We tried to forget what happened a few hours ago, though we knew it would probably happen again, and we need to be prepared for it. Later that evening, we took a walk around town, our wounds got healed a little by friendliness of locals, especially by one local family, who welcomed us in their restaurant by the road, taught us how to eat their local specialty, did not over-charged us a penny, and as matter of fact returned the money back to us insisting we over-paid. We came back to that family again the next day, and ordered a triple portion of their delicious pho soup. They were happy to see us, and smiles kept coming at us.
After Bao Loc, we continued our journey further North, to Dalat. This time, we were charged a reasonable bus fare, but still were asked for a little extra for the backpacks. Since the sum was small, and we were too tired for another highway battle, we paid. But, when we arrived to our new destination in Dalat, we went straight to the bus dispatcher, and turned the conductor in. Nothing probably would come out of it, but one never knows.
Now, a little about Dalat. Some books refer to this location as a Vietnamese version of French Alps... Maybe, I don't know if it is a fair comparison. One nice thing, however, is that the elevation makes a temperature a lot cooler, and a combination with fresh air provides a pleasant escape from the hot humid tropics temperatures we have been in for the past 6 months... We spent first two days here just by living our lives - we did not want to run around for sightseeing or attractions, we've seen and done a lot of it. We just wanted a few peaceful days. So, we walked around town, the lake, flower gardens, talked to locals, and sampled local dishes available all over town. On our last day, we decided to take a trip to the Quang Trung Reservoir/Lake. We took a cable car going above the tree tops, mountains, fields. The lake was nice - very peaceful, fresh air, surrounded by mountains and pine forests. We spent the entire afternoon there, it was nice to be away from crazy traffic, touts, etc. We returned back in the evening, and we felt that the Viet Nam reality was back... We were over-charged again at a local restaurant, the second time in the row. The second time in the row the situation was helped by a local girl (worker) who discretely went behind the back of the stall owner and returned the money back to us quietly repeating us " she doesn't know, she doesn't know". Yes, there are good honest people in Viet Nam, they give us hope, but just barely... The phrase from our guide book "not everybody is bad in Viet Nam" comes up more frequently nowadays...

Nha Trang - beach, what beach?
Yes, that's the only reason foreigners come here - to get sunburn, drink, to see and bee seen, and have a beach party. We've seen too much of it by now, it's not good enough. The only reason we ended up in Nha Trang is to continue further North on the coast to more remote non-touristy areas. But, we had to make a stop in Nha Trang. We steered away from the beach, and ended up in a non-touristy area. We were hungry. We found a lane with several stalls cooking pho (soup, that you would add your own ingredients to taste like basil, chilies, lime, etc.). Locals were staring at us, no one spoke English, which was good - tourists haven't made it here yet, that means less over-charging. We found a stall with cheap fresh soups, and another stall with delicious sugar cane-lime juices. After finishing the first servings, we ordered seconds, that pleased the cooking ladies, they gave us a big smile and quickly refilled our plates probably thinking "foreigners like our cooking", or "we are making double business", whatever the case we all were pleased. After the food, and getting the train tickets, we finally headed out to the beach waterfront. There was some celebration, on a big stage - right on the waterfront - speakers were blaring numerous live songs performed by Viet Nam military men - all dressed in uniforms they were signing their hearts and lungs out, which probably was a reason that no foreigners were insight, which worked for us...

Tuy Hoa
Buying train tickets in Nha Trang, a rail road lady kept asking "Tuy Hoa, YOU want to go to Tuy Hoa??" She obviously did not have any foreigners asking her about this destination, which was a nice validation to us, we may just end up in a better non-touristy part of Viet Nam... We were correct. Thank to Rob's excellent research, Tuy Hoa ended up the best place in our Viet Nam itinerary. No tourist in sight, not a single one! On our first day, over 100 people welcomed us, it felt so good to be treated as an honorary guest, not as an ATM machine to take advantage of... We walked everywhere, people - adults and kids - were waiving to us, saying hello, asking our names, and sending us big smiles. On our second day, while walking around after visiting a historical tower, we ended up in a small street park and sat down on a bench. A group of local elderly ladies welcomed us. One of them rushed towards us, and began shaking our hands. She motioned other ladies to do the same, and soon after a big circle of locals collected around us. They couldn't speak English, and we knew only a few polite Vietnamese phrases, but it was clear we liked each other. One lady kept showing us thumbs up and kept saying "Number one, number one!" A group of boys on the bicycles joined the circle, and wanted to know our names. Another lady kept pushing her child towards us, so the baby could also say hi to us. We were very appreciative of this kind attention. We bought a pineapple, and shared with our group. We all felt like a part of the family. Eventually, we had to continue on... We shook the hands, and said our good-buys. As we were disappearing in the distance, locals kept waiving to us, and kept smiling. We kept turning around to waive at them... We will never forget out stop in Tuy Hoa, this is probably what Viet Nam was like before it was ruined by tourism. There aren't so many of Tuy Hoa's left as we would find out later in our Viet Nam journey...

Next destination - Laos...