Day 9- D-day for Vietnam entry

I did not sleep at all last night!!! David zonked as soon as his head hit the pillow. Think I was worrying about waking up to get to the embassy.

We were up and out by 740, and ordered a grab tuktuk. It took ages in the crazy roads and in rush hour. We arrived in the embassy for 815 and turns out if your application is in by 9am your passport is back to you by 11am…. Dancer. Only downside is it’s 60 USD each, this has been the most expensive attempt at crossing the border.

We found a cafe booked a bus for 2pm and booked the next 7days of hostels so we have a planning place!! At 1030 we went back to embassy and could I find the receipt for the passports….no! Luckily we got them back with a driving licence. On leaving the embassy I found the receipt neatly folded between the notes in my purse where I had paid! Just too tired today.

We had our passports by 11am but we went straight to the bus station by tuktuk and got some food and just waited. Whilst in the station we played the new backpacking card game which is a relief to traditional cards. The first 2 cards David dealt me were…Vietnam country card and visa problem event card, well that was considered a bad omen.

We boarded the bus, not too bad actually, plenty of room, air con, fully reclining seats.

I enjoyed watching outside as we passed through the villages, watching them farm and tend to animals, some houses are beautiful whilst others just shacks but the litter is upsetting. David played a good 4 hours of football manager as all the buildings were the same as the rest of the country!

Just before arrival at the border we had a quick meal at a restaurant, veg and rice! I’ve discovered their sweet chilli sauce adds a bit of a kick to it!

As we approached the border the casino hotels were huge all with neon lights, David said it’s something to do with gambling laws in Vietnam that they also cross the border to go to the casino’s.

At the border we got off the bus, we got back on the bus, we then got back off again but this time with our luggage and the bus driver took all our passports to get us through together. One guy on the bus has already used his visa and had left Vietnam but only had a single entry one so had to pay a lot of money to get it sorted and resulted in us waiting for ages for it!

Were still on the bus now, hopefully not too far to go, looking at the map the bulk of the journey is done. Hopefully when we get off the bus in Ho Chi Minh the hostel is only 4minutes walk away…. We will see!