Night moves

Viet Nam is known for having a good postal system...we shall see. So today I mailed out a whopper package for 1,000,000 some odd Dong. Yep, the money is called Dong. Quite efficient, a clerk behind the counter even packed the box for me. I haven't been buying tons of stuff, but it's a relief to unload as much as you can to lighten your load.

Here's what I've gotten myself into now. An eleven hour sleeper bus ride to Nah Trang. The bus has bunk beds, seven beds per row, three rows, two aisles running between them, each bed maybe six feet long and a foot and a half across. It's a sight. There's a shelf for your shoes, which the driver made me remove before entering the bus. Thank god I wore socks. It cost $23 for an open ticket of two overnight bus trips, Saigon to Nha Trang, then Nha Trang to Hoi An. It works out to about a dollar an hour, much like in Ecuador.

The all-night experience involves fifteen minute intervals of almost sleep strung together with speed bumps taken at such a pace that you're almost thrown from your bunk. That, in combination with repetitive blasting of the horn almost every five seconds spells a sleepless night. I have moved seventeen times, completed five full rotations. Were I the hands of time, I'd have circled the face of the clock following in synch minute by minute. We stop every hour or two as well for a break. I never thought I'd say it, but I miss the M14.