We leave behind the bustling city of Can Tho from its central bus station—a term loosely describing a sort of bus depot with dozens of mostly smallish busses and vans that move throughout the area. There are dozens of hawkers all screeching incomprehensibly, and passengers strewn about the few “sitting” areas, surrounded by boxes and bales and lots of small children. We’d been to the station the day before in a futile attempt to buy our bus ticket ahead of time. The message we understood was that yes, there was a bus to Ha Tien, but only tomorrow at noon, and we couldn’t buy the ticket til 11:30. No special reason. Resigned, we are now back to actually purchase the ticket and go. Not entirely surprisingly, the clerk now signs that there is no bus at noon, only at 1, and we have to “go sit” and come to buy the ticket at 12:30. Hmmm. We actually find a spot to sit, and have been sitting for maybe 10 minutes, when a hawker we ran into upon our arrival rushes over when he sees us—we’re easy to spot as the only foreigners—. He recalls we’re looking to reach Ha Tien, and tears across the lot and points to the bus. It leaves at noon. Mystified we board the hellishly hot bus, where we’re told to sit at the very back. Slowly the bus begins filling up and at about 12:20, we do actually leave!
We share the bus with gossiping little old ladies carting bundles and boxes, a wiry old man who steps on the bus in his pajamas, but is so hot that he soon sheds his top, and alienates a good cross-section of the passengers. And then there is the lady who was dropped off at the station on her motorbike, dressed in full regalia: gloves, hat, face-mask, long sleeves and long pants, and socks(!)—none of which she removes for even a moment during the trip. There is the inevitable presence of cigarette smoke, which only adds to the general heaviness of the air. Eventually a hefty local sits beside us, and we take out the map to ask him where we are. He traces the general route and also indicates more or less when we might arrive in Ha Tien.
We sit back and rattle on through the never-ending sprawl of shops and markets and residences, while the driver races madly down the road, honking incessantly at everything in his way. Slowly passengers begin being dropped off. We find a couple of more comfortable seats further forward, but have barely settled in, when the bus stops in the middle of the road, and we’re told to get off, with repeated insistent cries of “HA TIEN! HA TIEN!” Again confused, we get our packs and get off the bus, when another swoops in front of it, and we’re told to get in there. The new driver is like the old one, but on some kind of serious amphetamines, and it’s an absolute miracle he doesn’t kill something along the way. We tear through what is actually the first thing that looks anything like “countryside”, and about an hour later we’re told to get off the bus. It’s a dusty lot at an out-of -town intersection, and before we can even get our bearings, we’re approached by a couple of motorbike taxis, and we’re off to a hotel where we hope there is room, since we’re rather tired by now. Luck is with us. A brief rest and shower later, we're ready to figure out how to get out of this small border town and to the island of Phu Quoc, since the desk clerk has already profusely apologized, but there are no available ferry tickets for Monday.
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