Hitchhiking in Vietnam: way to Mũi Né

17^th September, 2024.

Hitchhiking in Vietnam: way to Mũi Né.

I walk a lot until a suitable hitchhiking spot. And still sucks! After about one hour waiting, the rain starts. Great! Many buses and vans pass by and to some of them I must make a sign that they should carry on. At certain point, a van actually stops. I tell them that I don’t have any money, and they can read on my sign where I am going, Mũi Né, but after some deliberation they tell me I can come. They are a bit rough, but what can I say, they are taking me for free.

We travel together for about two hours, but they are going into small towns and making many stops. Also, they try really hard to catch people in bus stops. It’s awkward and funny.

At certain point the driver tells me it is his last stop. It is kind of half way to Mũi Né but I am fine with that. He even try to give me money for the bus. How nice! I refuse, of course.

It is kind of in the middle of nowhere though. Laugh. It is a secondary road, as I am told by one of the locals, and the busy highway it’s somewhere nearby here. Damn it!

I star walking but it starts raining again. And really strong this time. And for a while.

The house where I am waiting in front of it, has an elderly lady preparing some food. I am just about to ask her for some food when together with her daughter they start trying to help me to get to Mũi Né. They stop a bus and say I can get it for free and they will drop me off in Phan Thiet, which is just before Mũi Né. And they say I don’t need to pay. Yeah, I don’t know about that because it happens other times in Vietnam, people just put me in buses and tell me it’s for free. Laugh. But I really don’t see them paying anything to drivers and stuff, so I really don’t know what’s going on.

Anyway, the bus is funny. It is small and kind of falling apart. And there’s livestock on it, as I would hear the roosters later. Laugh. But firstly I start talking with a friendly man. He gives me some delicious fried cakes, made out of purple yam. And there’s some cheese sprinkles to go with it. I just love it! I finish one package and he tells me I should keep the other one, as he has eaten a lot already.

I am the last passenger then and we stop at some place where I must change buses. It gets dark and late as I arrive in Phan Thiet. The few passengers on the bus cannot speak English, the same for the driver, and nobody seems keen to help me to figure out where should I get out. I really don’t get why people get scared of someone who speaks a different language. I feel like a demon or something in these situations, when people seem deadly afraid of me.

I start walking in the direction they tell me Mũi Né is located but I want to make sure about the directions, so I ask for help in a pharmacy. At first, a young girl is kind of helping me, and I am looking in her phone for the directions to a church. A church for Loki’s sake! But then, all of sudden, her mum makes a sign to her, she grabs her phone and they both get inside the pharmacy and completely ignore me. What? Are you freaking kidding me? I had my phone on my hands also all the time. Did she / they think I was trying to steal the girl’s phone or something? I still had my backpack on me! I was shocked! Shocked! And another thing is, there is this huge altar right in front of me, with Buddhas statues, incense, offers and bullshits! Bullshit!

I ask for wi-fi in a hotel and get direction to that church. I ask for left-overs in a restaurant and they give me a takeaway package which was by the counter. Plus a Coke! How sweet!

I walk half way to the church and then when I ask for directions in a small food stand, a lovely lady offers to take me there in her motorcycle. Sweet! But no luck at the church though, as they are already closed. When I ask around, a nice lady from a grocery shop try to help me but her attempts fail. And for whatever reason she didn’t feel like inviting me to stay with her or to camp in her garden. So she took me to a park, where she said I could camp.

The park is surrounded by nice houses and some fancy hotels. I think it’s cool and that I will be definitely safe here, right? Right? It’s dark, and I put my tent under a construction, afraid of rain. In the middle of the night I wake up with someone walking around my tent. It’s a man and he keeps waking and walking around, trying to look inside and figure out what’s going on. Because it’s too hot, I don’t have the cover on, so if he uses a flashlight, he can see inside. And he does that. When I react to that, at first he kind of apologizes and leaves. But then, all of sudden, he comes back and start to pee in my tent! What? Luckily, I think he couldn’t pee much because almost nothing was coming out but still. I get so angry that I make a move to get out of my tent, I was ready to kick his ass, but then he got in his motorbike and left. Why the hell someone would do that? So I pack my stuff and walk to an open hotel, kind of resort, and explain to the receptionist what happened. He tells me that that guy is crazy. Oh, great! So they know him! I ask to stay in the lounge until 6 a.m., when I can finally leave, and he says it’s OK.

I take my tent to the pool bathroom and I wash it, as well as I can. Then I clean myself also, as I got all sweaty with this whole situation. I have some instant noodles with me, so I ask for some hot water and I eat that. When there’s some light in the sky, I move on.

P.S.: In all these years of camping around the world, 65 countries, some of them considered to be dangerous, I was never disturbed by anyone. Ever! In Morocco, in two occasions, once in a beach and another in a park, a guard came to check on me, but only out of concern for my safety. And people always ask me this question, you know? If I am not afraid of camping, if someone ever came to disturb me. What a surprise that something like that, even though not really dangerous or traumatizing, would happen in Asia, here in Vietnam. What a shame!