Bus mudbath, travel buddies and HCMC

This story is awesome. I am always excited when I'm sharing it with somebody else.

I was at Otres beach waiting for a tuk-tuk to take me to the Sihanoukville from where I should take a bus to Phnom Penh and then to HCMC (Ho Chi Minh City)

The tuk-tuk driver picked up also 2 Chinese girls. They didn't speak much in English but one sentense they said and it was "Can we take a picture with you". What? Haha. It's happening a lot but it still surprises me when somebody askes for this. When we arrived to Sihanoukville they stopped being shy and speaked a bit of English. Atleast I had company.

When the bus arrived we boarded in and then it began.

A guy from the bus company was walking the alley and found a phone on the floor and nobody said it belongs to somebody so he kept it. Then the bus left. After 15 minutes one guy started to rage. He was looking for his phone. But the phone was somewhere in Sihanoukville in some guy's pocket. So the bus stopped and big argument was in place. The guy was yelling at the driver and his mate. His friend was calling a police. But nothing helped. There was nothing any of us could do now. So the bus went on the road again.

About 2 hours from PP the driver from no reason given started to turn around. On a narrow road. It was midnight and raining. So what happened? We got stuck in mud. From the half to the end of the bus was in mud. Brilliant driving skills I would say. And I did. But I was laughing all the time and just enjoying this experience.

So let's take a look what happened.

A little video from rescuing action.

A bus got stuck in a mud

So we left the bus and stopped traffic on both sides. And we were looking for some big badass truck that could help us. After roughly 20 minutes we managed to get one. Almost every driver who was in the traffic came to help us. That was very nice. So they dismantled the front bumper of the bus attached steel ropes and the truck pulled us from the mud. When that happened we noticed that the rear wheel is not exactly in the right position. Yep. It was off. Plus the engine was leaking oil. Great night.

But all bad is good for something. Thanks to this stop I made new friends. 2 Swiss girls. Milena and Larissa. We get on really well so we talked and later on I asked them if they want to travel together. They said yes so we did. Since then I had the best time.

We continued on our road. This time with only 3/4 of the wheels and thanks to that it was really slow ride. We came to PP 3 hours later than we should. Luckily we weren't in hurry. We had to wait another 3 hours for our bus to HCMC.

This is how it looked at the bus station. Everybody was waiting for a bus to Vietnam.

At 6am the bus came and we set off to HCMC. It was nice ride on a sunny day. After we arrived we took a taxi to the hostel where the Swiss girls stayed and I continued on foot to mine. After all that travelling we were really tired so the only thing we did was to grab some food and chilled. In my room was a girl from Germany which I randomly met again in Da Nang, Phong Nha and Luang Prabang in Laos. You can meet a lot of people doing the same trip as you so its possible that you meet same people from time to time. The next day we applied for a freetour in HCMC by locals. It was 2 Vietnamese girls 19 and 21yo who were studying at college. They showed us the main places and buildings in the city. Took us to a lovely cafe shop and we tried this amazing Vietnamese coffee. Really the best coffee I have ever had. They took us to a local Ben Thanh market... I'm sorry I didn't take pictures because you can see things like brains, hearts, livers of animals. Whole fish being prepared. Crabs of a football size and more.

Ho Chi Minh City hall

Fully enjoyable day

Saigon opera house

Saigon Notre-Dame cathedral

This is inside of a city post office 

We even went to a War Museum. It was really interesting and awful what we read how the war looked and how many people have died or been born disabled after USA used chemicals on people (agent Orange) the most famous one.

After that we went to the cafe shop.

Graduating students

Then we had so much of a free time so we just walked the city and then one of us had an idea. Let's go to the cinema. So we did. We found a cinema that was screening Spiderman: Homecoming. A movie girls did not see yet but wanted to. And I wanted to see it again.

In the evening we went to a dinner and met my friend whom I met on couchsurfing. Vietnamese guy Neo and his French buddy but I cannot recall his name now..

Do you remember Max and Cloud? California dudes I met on Koh Ta Kiev in Cambodia? Then guess what. I met them again! They invited us to their hostel on the roof to have some drinks. We could not say no right. It was a great night. Thanks Max and Cloud.

The view was really nice from the roof. Down there you can see party street.

Next morning we had to find a bus to Da Lat as locals call it the Honeymoon city. We just knew the direction so we were pretty much guessing which house it will be where we can get the tickets. But we managed.

Yep we have been to Saigon (HCMC) and it was beautiful! But we had to follow the plan. We heard a lot about Da Lat so we were excited a lot and... it was worth it.

7 hour drive on this bus? It was rather comfortable.

Next time > Da Lat