We have arrived happily and overcame the first challenges. What remains is to learn Vietnamese at least a bit. We have had trouble ordering a normal tea so far. They keep bringing us a cold version with potentially dangerous ice and anise or what (internet says it is a speciality typical for Saigon – hopefully just here), called tra da. That is a joyful sound you do in Czech when leaving for a moto-trip, we thought and had fun on it till we found out that the right pronunciation is cha da. Nevermind. The weather is hot and humid here. We started the at-least-2-cold-showers-a-day regime straight away. They have delicious breakfast soups and slightly too many motorbikes here.

3 days later, Can Tho, Mekong Delta

We left Saigon for Can Tho by bus, which was a real adventure. The departure time was at 3 pm, they brought us in the minibus at quarter to 3, at 3.05 came the driver, started the engine and we set off. Not for long, the first break was in place in less than one minute. The driver went away. We waited for about 10 minutes. In the meantime, an officer came (not sure if he was a member of police, the army or people’s militia, the uniforms still confuse us as nearly everybody has some). He asked some people for their tickets, then he spotted us, white tourists. “Your tickets,” he said. “We gave them to the driver,” we replied. That was fine then. The driver was who knows where but this guy was content with this and left. We would have had to speak in English together in order to make/sort a problem, that might be the reason why, I guess. In some minutes, our driver came back. Sat on his seat, started the engine, switched it off and left again. Came back in another 10 minutes, this time with some more passangers. All seats are taken, now we will go, we thought. Yup, nearly. We just had to pick up our driver’s son/nephew/steward and his 2 friends so they could stand the whole way, stop on a petrol station for no visible reason, stop on a four-lane highway to meet a cyclist and get a package from him and finally stop on another petrol station, this time to get the actual fuel. And Tra Da. Driving style called by Czechs “the break-the gas pedal” changed soon into the style “the horn-the gas pedal”. When we could, we went 100 kms in hour, when there was a police car, 50. We were overrunning from the left and right, jumping over the bridges and coconut palm trees and banana trees were surrounding us together with small, old and shabby houses, mixed with perhaps colonial-style luxury villas. We arrived alive, with no injuries and nearly on time to Can Tho and I must say I really enjoyed the journey. It was almost like an action movie. We also did some shopping when the bus stopped for the lunch break and bought some fruit. There were 5 kinds and we knew just one, the jackfruit, so we are studying the lists of exotic fruit with photographs now to have at least a slight idea what we want to buy next time.