Living in a Ho Chi Minh City apartment complex — the last holiday of this year! (Ho-note)

September 2nd is Vietnam's National Day. It's a holiday! This is the last public holiday of the year!!!! I'm curious how Vietnamese people spend it~ The main roads that are usually bustling have fewer cars and motorbikes now. It seems people are heading back to their hometowns, or going to nearby resorts and tourist spots. My spouse and I are also taking advantage of the holiday to go to Can Tho, about 300km south of Ho Chi Minh City. We're taking the 10 o'clock bus, but since there will probably be things we don't understand and unexpected things will probably happen... we headed to the ticket center at 9:30.

There weren't that many people, so I thought it might not be too crowded... And I wondered whether the bus was really going to come at 10 o'clock... Then a staff member called out to me and said, "Get on the bus!" (In the photo it looks like a commanding tone lol... but they were actually polite.)

This is the bus that came. It looked so splendid that I thought, "Ah... so this is the one we're riding.

But this bus rocked and rolled for about 20 minutes. And what was waiting for us there was... The real bus center!

Dozens of buses gather here, departing one after another without a break. It's not systematized like the Shinjuku Bus Terminal (Busta), so it's absolutely packed with passengers. On top of that, almost everyone has quite a lot of luggage. Souvenirs, I guess~. And what I found kind of unusual was that so many people were carrying banh mi — the big baguette-style ones.

Here you go — the vendors call out to you holding both the slim bucket-style boxes and the round, thick-style ones. There are even people who buy several at once... it's not like you'd eat them all on the bus, so I guess they make for a casual little souvenir. Now, time to board the bus, but the ticket... it's kind of flashy, or rather, it just has way too much information on it — I honestly can't tell what's what.

With my eyes stinging, I board relying on the handwritten numbers. So it's A10 and A11... There's a seating chart at the entrance.

This time, the bus is a reclining type. Well, actually, not a seat you sit in and tilt back — it's originally a type you lie flat in. In other words, it's like a bunk-bed style seat? There are three rows of bunk beds, with A on the bottom and B on top. We have the bottom seat.

Some passengers just relax and read. When boarding, take off your shoes and head to your own seat. You'll settle into a cockpit-like seat. You can stretch your legs out — so comfy, so comfy! But between the beds, the walking space is narrow.

We move along, shuffling sideways like a crab. The bus ride to Cần Thơ takes about three hours, including a break. Here and there on Vietnam's roads, there are raised bumps that seem to be made on purpose. I'm sure it's meant to keep drivers from going too fast, but the floaty feeling of my body lifting up when we go over them feels so good!! Between that indescribable vibration and rhythm, before I knew it, inside the bus...

Off into dreamland~~~. Not just soft breathing—I can even hear a full-on snore. Then, after about an hour to Can Tho, it was time for a restroom break. We were dropped off at what you'd call a service area in Japan— or more like a parking area, to use the restroom or buy some souvenirs. Speaking of Japanese parking areas... there's corn dogs, ramen, soft-serve ice cream, and so on... And in Vietnam too... yep, there's soft-serve ice cream here as well. But, something about it is a little concerning...

A U-shaped treat that lets you enjoy two flavors, vanilla and chocolate! It's 20,000 dong, so that's about 100 yen. So, let's order it!

The lady swirled two kinds of soft-serve ice cream into the cone, round and round in a spiral. The soft-serve, packed onto a cone as satisfying to eat as an "Umaka Bou," was truly delicious!! My trip to Kanto is only just beginning~~ Migration Life Ranking