Wow, this was something!! We just spent a night on  an overnight bus again, going from Nha Trang to Hoi An and it was pretty close to "a ride from hell". Even though we “only” spent mere 40 minutes this time waiting for it to arrive after the scheduled time, the ride itself surpassed all the previous ones we experienced with this company - and I mean in a not too good way...

Since the bus came almost full already the last seats left were in the front. The front seemed to be “under control” of the locals. Not that it has to do anything with anything and thanks to a young girl that apparently fell in love with me on the first sight we even got to try the roasted water melon seeds that we wanted to try anyway, but the fact is that we were the only white people sitting in the front part of the bus. Maybe everybody else tried riding in front before and never wanted to try it again… Why would I say that? Well…

Firstly, the huge roof air-conditioner’s outlet grill was almost overhead so we were suffering from almost arctic temperatures the whole 12 hours we were on the bus. It was damn cold even with our jumpers on.
Secondly, seeing the driving of one of the drivers from that close was really too much to stomach at times. This “mad” driver not was not only honking with his amplified horn all the time, but was also avoiding street light poles, trucks etc. by centimeters only using the “jerk left, jerk right” driving tactics.
Thirdly, when the mad driver was not driving he, lying in his hammock spread between the seats right next to us, just had to listen to music or talking radio put on through the bus’s speaker system. Once, at about one o’clock in the morning, a girl came from the back of the bus and asked him if he could switch the radio off so that everybody can sleep. The answer was quick and simple – he could not because he liked it… Uhhh.. What a customer service!, no? :;) It got even better at about three in the morning, when they started talking only on the radio – loud and in Vietnamese! If there were any people at all who could sleep a bit, it was the more harder for us in the front of the bus who had the often used loud horn right in their ears.
And the last major sleep preventer is still to come. From almost every of those personal air-con outlets above us water was dripping on our heads. It was not too bad on my side, but Tanja sat by the window and had water dripping on her all night.

Great for an endurance ride… :)