Bus ride from Hell

We waited some more in front of a travel agency office with other travelers. The bus came and was not at all as promised. No bathrooms and no wifi, and even the locals were having trouble painfully squeezing themselves into the bunks. On top of that- the driver insisted on listening to loud music by the Vietnamese Sarit Hadad and honking loudly all the time. He may as well have been leaning continually on the horn all night. This was the bus ride from hell.

The sleepless bus arrived in Nah Trang at about 0730 (about 13 hours after we departed from Hoi An) and since we had an hour to wait for the bus to Dalat, we went in the direction of the beach with 2 other travelers. The beach was not at all like the one in Hoi An, and we were happy we did not stay in Nah Trang any longer. We bought Bahn Mi (Vietnamese sandwich) from a roadside stall and threw them away, and I bought some coffee.

When our minibus finally arrived, the bus attendant was having trouble packing luggage into the luggage compartment on the bus. He opened my backpack in the process and detached the hula hoop. This made me even more angry than I was and that 4 hour ride was also pretty bad. He waited with Guy's backpack for last and stuffed it in a small street-side compartment. On the way up winding hill roads the minibus stopped in the middle of nowhere for a "bathroom break." Incredulously, I asked, "This is the bathroom?" Guy and a few women still went out to use the bushes.

The minibus dumped us in the center of Dalat near some hotels and hostels, and we took our bags and climbed back up the hill to find a decent cheap hotel, avoiding the people trying to sell us stuff. We peeked into a hotel above our price range, then took a taxi to the outskirts of town and checked into a cheap hostel that had good reviews.

Why it was so highly rated we don't understand, since the room was small and in shoddy condition. The staff in that hostel was very friendly and some of them spoke good English, not good enough to make up for the bad rooms. We had lunch not far from the hostel and had a look at some other guesthouses in the area. We found two that were up to our standard and decided we have now a place to move to the next day. We had lunch in that hotel's restaurant.

In any case, we were sleep deprived from the long bus ride. As you might have understood, we did not get much sleep on the sleeping bus. We went back to the room and slept until about 2200 and then wanted to look for food. The front door to the hostel was locked and barred with a metal curtain and all the corridors were dark. After realizing we were locked in and panicking slightly since this is a fire risk, we went back to sleep until the morning.