On the first night in Vietnam, a man staying at the same hotel suggested a trip to Long Hai. It was an hour and a half boat ride on the Saigon River landing in Vung Tau, a great little spot. Had we known what Long Hai was going to be like, we probably would've opted to stay right where we were. We found two bikes to take us the 40kms to Long Hai for $2.50US. The ride out was beautiful and worth it for that, if nothing else.
Upon arrival, there weren't any beach hotels. The one we did find was about 3x more the price than the guide book had suggested ... it was more than we wanted to pay because there didn't seem to be much of a beach in front. We found a cheap hotel just up the road. It was $12US a night for a small room with no satellite TV. We weren't sure what we were going to do for the evening as we quickly realized we were in a bit of a ghost town. Not one white face.
The beach was alright and we spent most of the afternoon walking about. Once the sun started to set, we found ourselves a bench to sit on. Out of nowhere comes a guy with a table. He places the table in front of us and asks us in very poor English what we'd like to order. Mom and I looked around as we weren't aware we were at a place to be served. We decided to order two beers. About 10 minutes later, after he probably ran down to the store to purchase our request, he tried charging us more than double the price of what we had paid for our beers at the other end of the beach. Nice try on his part. Too bad for him we were already one in for the day.
After returning to our hotel, we called the guys that had brought us to Long Hai and asked them to pick us up first thing the following morning. It didn't seem that there was any going ahead at this point. Long Hai didn't have a bus station, nor did the tiny town over. Going back to HCMC seemed the best direction to go.
We arrived back to HCMC around 11am ... exactly 24 hours after we had left. While we ate breakfast, the big dilemma was whether to spend another night in HCMC or take off on the next bus. We opted for the next bus. The big tourist bus to Mui Ne was leaving at 8pm that evening, dropping us at our destination around 1am. It didn't strike us as the best option so we made our way to the public bus station.
Me having taken public transit in third world countries had a bit of an idea of what we were in for. Mom on the other hand was a bit out of the know. It was fun to see her reaction to the daily lives of an underdeveloped country. The bus was actually a big van meant to seat 16, 4 rows of 4. Upon leaving the bus station, we were at 17. One guy seemed to be working with the the small bus as he didn't have a seat and he was handing out water to the passengers. With no air and not much room one was thankful.
The driver drove most of the way in the middle of the road, weaving in and out of traffic with his hand on the horn. We stopped on two different occasions to pick up more passengers. Mom and I only looked at each other and quietly giggled. The final two shoved in, crouching on the foot step of the van. It took 5 tries to close the door, but alas the overloaded bus was on the move.
Our stop was the bus station and we were the last ones to depart the bus. There wasn't a beach in site ... only a ton of bikes wanting to take us for our money. Big black skies threatened rain within moments. We spotted one taxi and made a run for it. Big heavy drops started coming out of the sky and we were glad to be under cover. $10US and on our way to Mui Ne beach, things didn't look too hopeful.
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