Ho Chi Minh to Huế

Spent 21 hours or so on the bus. Next to a crazy woman as it happens. She was about 60 odd – but mentally, like a puppy.

I offered her some of my drink, which she pinched off me and drank. So I offered her another one. And she drank that.

She then proceeded to start depositing money in my seat-back wallet which added up to a few dollars. No particular reason, just better there, I guess.

As we got going, she kept looking into my eyes, she was staring over at me and trying to play with the hairs on my arms muttering strange inanities, with wide eyes and an expectation that it was making some sense to me.

Sometimes, when I said the words back to her, this was very funny. Hilarious in fact.

I wondered what she was actually saying, because she seemed to make most other people laugh, the driver and the service station staff. And whether we would find her funny in England.

Not sure that we would.

So I soaked up some of this novel humor.

Collision

As we were coming out of Ho Chi Minh, the bus driver had a collision. Someone pulled out on him and he moved into the side of another vehicle.

After a while, this vehicle caught us up, and the two parties had a debacle on the side of the road. The crazy lady slept through it, but woke up shortly after and started ranting and raving and singing songs.

Warning

When we stopped for dinner, one of the other bus riders told me it would be better to stay away from her as she probably wanted to ‘turn me over’ as I believe the phrase is.

I said I thought she was crazy and a little funny, but I wasn’t intending on doing anything ‘with’ her. He said he thought that would be a good idea and that Vietnam was mostly ‘safe’, but you could still need to be careful.