On the move again: Dan and I left Ben Tre via the ferry to My Tho. From the boat we found a cyclo driver who promised to take us to the bus station…

It’s the beginning of the wet season in southern Vietnam. Every day there is a violent downpour in the afternoon that lasts about 40 minutes, but otherwise the weather is pleasant. As soon as we got on that cyclo, though, it started pouring down. In a matter of seconds we were soaked through. It was a slow ride (the cyclo, or xiclo, is a pedaled rickshaw-type thing that’s common in southern vietnam) and when we finally got off we saw that we weren’t taken to a bus station at all. Instead, the driver just took us to a random spot on the highway where he could flag down a minibus and make a nice commission on our fare. We managed to get him to leave us alone and flagged down a bus on our own, but more drama ensued. As soon as we got on, we asked some of the people around us what they were paying to get to Can Tho. We figured the price should be 25,000 dong each and the negotiations over the fare soon turned into an arm-flailing broken english shouting match. Eventually we just gave the driver 25,000 each and said we’d just get off the bus if that wasn’t enough. In retaliation he turned the radio up to full volume - there was only one speaker on the bus and it was about an inch from Dan’s ear. For the entire ride we had to suffer through ear-splitting Vietnamese power-ballads. Everyone else on the bus found this quite funny. When we got to the bridge that crosses over to Can Tho, an english-speaking Vietnamese lady helped us smooth over the argument over the fare and after paying a few thousand more dong everyone was happy.

Dan and I found a cheap room in town (Phuong Nha Hotel) and turned in for the night.