It is difficult to imagine how chaotic the bus system is in Vietnam traveling between cities. Even those people who can speak Vietnamese call it a mess and difficult to navigate. We had been on inter-city buses a couple of times since we've been here, but always with the assistance of Vietnamese speakers. This was our first attempt at navigating My Dinh bus station in Hanoi without a native speaker.
To understand what it is like to try and travel by bus in this country, picture this: imagine you have to take a flight from Cleveland to Chicago. Now imagine that there are no airlines -- everyone owns their own plane and when you arrive at the airport there are 10 or 15 people that approach you and start asking where you're going and convince you to take their plane. Also, you know that there are flights that go from Cleveland to Chicago, but you don't know when they leave. And there is no printed schedule or online resource you can use. The departure times for flights go to Chicago from the Cleveland airport only when the owner of the plane has enough people that want to go to Chicago. So you go the airport intending to buy a ticket, only the airport has about 300 airplanes waiting to take off to lots of different locations, and it is tough to find the plane going to Chicago. And to top all of that off, imagine that they only speak a foreign language like Japanese (which you don't speak) and no one speaks English.
That's My Dinh bus station.
Libby had been working on making a visit to a rural school in Hai Duong, a city about 60 miles outside Hanoi. She had been corresponding with a Fulbright English teacher at a gifted high school in the city, collected art materials to do a project out there, and arranged for all the proper introductions with letters from the embassy to the principal.
Now all she had to do was get there. Libby had been told by her advisor that the buses go to Hai Duong "every half hour" or so, and we had traveled by bus with him in the past so we knew he knew what he was talking about. Libby didn't have to be at the school in Hai Duong till 4 pm, so Libby and I walked the 20 minutes to the station and got there about 11:30 am. Plenty of time.
When we arrived, we knew we would be approached by many guys trying to sell Libby a ticket, and we were ready for that so we politely but firmly said no each time ("khong"). We went inside to the crowded station to see where Libby should go. There is an official ticket counter there, but in all the listings of the cities we could not find "Hai Duong". So we approached one of the windows and was told Libby should go to "# 15".
And that's where the frustration really started. After finding platform 15 and asking "Hai Duong?" we were told no, no. Go over to that side of the station. Maybe 32, maybe 39. When we walked over there, another guy said, "no, no" and led us all around to the other side of the station, near platform 2, before shrugging his shoulders as if to say "I don't know." Then we were told we should take a taxi or walk to the Big C Supermarket, that a bus to Hai Duong was leaving from there. Wha...aaaat? It is hard for us to believe that there are all of these busses around and not one of them is going to Hai Duong, so we keep asking. Finally, after going back and forth a few times and trying to ask many people, we think we understand that the bus will be coming on platform 37 but not until 2 pm.
Really hot and frustrated at this point, and wondering if Libby will even be able to make it to Hai Duong in time when she takes the 2 pm bus, we leave the bus station to grab a bite to eat and get a bubble tea for Libby. At this point I need to leave for an appointment at the apartment, so Libby goes back to the bus station.
As 2 pm approaches and she has gone back and forth between platforms a few more times, she is at the right platform but notices at a platform 5 or 6 down that there is a small bus that says "Hai Duong". She points to it but is told to stay at the current platform, that her bus is running about 20 minutes late but it will arrive. Skeptical, she goes to try to find the other bus but it has moved. She goes back next to her original platform and sits next to a student and her mother, and the student speaks a little English. "Hai Duong?" Libby asks. "Yes," she is told. "What time?" 3 pm. (!#$!!?!) So now she is definitely not going to make it. To make matters worse, she gets Viet on the phone to speak to the Vietnamese man near the platform and learns that the 2 pm bus did come, but they didn't want Libby to get on because she is a foreigner, the bus was crowded, and they didn't want Libby sitting in the aisle, so they wanted her to take the 3 pm bus.
Disappointed, hot, angry, and frustrated, she has to call the school in Hai Duong to say she was not going to make it. She learned they had made special arrangements for her and even had special food and a welcoming committee. Needless to say, it was not one of our finest moments in Hanoi.
The day did end on a bright note, however. Finn got to Skype with his second grade class at James A. Garfield in Garrettsville. The students had good questions for Finn and it was fun for us to answer them.
No comments:
Post a Comment