Next Stop is Vietnam

A vendor offering fruit to bus passengers

It started with a bus ride--my trip to Vietnam, that is. A ride on a bus designed for people who are 5'4" and 130 lbs. I'm that and then some, to say the very least. (I could almost feel my seatmate's dread as he saw me coming. He sat forward, leaning on the back of the seat in front of him for the majority of the ride from Phnom Pehn to Ho Chi Minh City.) Put it this way: after the first two hours my rear end was numb.

Crossing the Mekong by ferry

Just prior to the Vietnam border there was a thirty minute "rest" stop. (I still haven't figured out why. Maybe the bus company owns the restaurant.) Most people left the bus and entered an outdoor food hall (too hot under there for me); some stayed on the bus. I ventured out long enough to be ignored by the first two people I approached. Toilet? I asked. Nothing. Oh well, I went on the bus. (If you think the bus was designed for little tiny people, picture the bathroom on the bus. Got it? Riiight.) All aboard...ten minutes later we were at the border.

One of the fruit vendors at the rest stop

I should just tell you that the stop at the Vietnam border was two hours and leave it at that. That is probably enough information for you to get the picture, but I can't resist... It took two hours for forty people to show their passports and visas (multiple times) and scan their luggage. Two hours. OK first, everybody gave his or her passport to the bus hostess. Then everyone got off the bus. After ten minutes or so, the hostess gained everyone's attention and began to call off the name of each passenger at which time she returned that person's passport. Tedious. Absolutely tedious. No kidding...as soon as she handed my passport to me, I was required to hand it to a Vietnamese official sitting behind the window of a glass booth (which he shared with another official who was sitting behind him facing the window on the opposite side. If you don't know where this is going, you're not trying.) Once again, no kidding...the guy took the passport, did something (I'm not sure at this point) and motioned for me (here it comes...) to go to the other side of the booth, which, of course, I did. When it was my turn, I handed him my passport (fully expecting him to send me back around to the other side). He used an electronic camera to take my photo before handing me my passport.


OK once again, no kidding, I moved one step from the booth and the bus hostess took my passport. I reentered the bus as did everyone else. The bus traveled 100 yards and (would you like time to guess? I can wait...) we all were directed off the bus and into a reception hall. We waited along with countless other people kinda sorta in a line, but more like a herd for 45 minutes. 45 minutes. For-ty-fiiiive minutes! Why were we waiting? At the end of the hallway was one official sitting on a raised platform behind a glass partition. (Any guesses regarding what he was doing? Give yourself one point if you said "checking passports.") The problem at that moment was that we didn't have the passports, the hostess did. She arrived and gave the pile of passports to him. He sat with a huge stack of passports, slowly lifting them one at a time, doing whatever he was doing, and handing them (one at a time) back to the hostess who then called the name aloud. (Picture this: after 45 minutes in a hallway crowded with luggage and backpacks everyone had quite naturally pushed forward denying all access to the people whose names were being called. We were packed tighter than the fans at a British football match.)

Eight hours--that's how long it took us to arrive in Ho Chi Minh City, just two hours behind schedule; two hours spent at the border.