Rach Gia and Super Dongs

After breakfast on the roof, we hop into our mini-bus where the lady from Bao An Travel Service (Welcome Travel), www.welcometravelvietnam.com (I only give you her details so you don’t use them, should you ever find yourself in HCMC) insists that we must take the front 3 seats and one behind, rather than our current two in front and two behind arrangement. Apparently, all seats are pre-sold and pre-allocated. We’re not 5 minutes up the road before the driver pulls over and insists that all four of us squeeze onto the front 3 seats. I refuse and they call up the woman from the travel agency who insists that the front row, although being only 3 seats wide, is actually counted as 4 seats in Vietnam. I refuse to move, as does the bus driver. We eventually reach a compromise where I will sit up front with him (all just a cunning ploy to get me to sit next to him, I’m sure). I feeling quite vulnerable this close to the windscreen, as he hits speeds of up to 130 kph on small windy roads, at times using the grass verge as a lane, and it’s very fortunate that we’re not involved in the motorway pile-up which we pass by some hours later.

The children are fantastic for the entire 7-hour journey to Rach Gia where we check into one of the best hotels in town (there’s only 3), Kim Co, where rooms are £6 per night, mating geckos for free. We splash out and take two (rooms, not mating geckos, who only come in two’s). A late afternoon stroll around in search of a restaurant for dinner confirms that this is a town largely untouched by tourism. The typical tourist takes a 1 hour flight from Ho Chi Minh directly to Phu Quoc, but since the flights were sold out for several days, we’re reduced to staying here for the night before our early morning boat. We’re somewhat of a novelty and manage to attract a little crowd of local kids who follow us in our search and Harley, as ever, is touched, pinched and stroked whenever he passes people. We eventually manage to find a restaurant but whichever chicken previously owned the legs Ruby had, I think he must have been a champion weight lifter.

With nothing else to do here, we get an early night in preparation for our 3-hour boat journey to Phu Quoc on the Super Dong, express boat. Whoever owns this also owns a sense of humour. “Hey baby, wanna take a ride on my Super Dong?” could prove to be the Vietnamese chat-up line of choice.