Welcome Back to Breakfast with Lisa & Josh!

Soundtrack for this newsletter: Keygen - Lukhash

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In the past 15 minutes, we've been shuttled from a boat, to a smaller boat, then onto a massive bus, put onto the back of a motorbike, crammed into a speed boat, then onto another coach bus.

All to make it off Cat Ba Island.

And honestly, we're loving every minute of it.

The ole’ bus-on-a-boat. Classic SEA experience.

We spent a night out here on a boat cruising around Lan Ha Bay, and the ever-popular Ha Long Bay. To say that it was beautiful would be a huge understatement.

Just, wow.

It was spectacular, a truly once-in-a-lifetime experience, blissful 24 hours spent silently gliding past thousands of impossibly standing limestone islands.

Getting there and back? Not quite the same.

In today's newsletter, we want to give you some insight into the absolutely fascinating world of public transportation we’ve experiened here in Vietnam.

It all started with reserving the bus - we did this through WhatsApp, messaging a total stranger with a photo of a bus in his profile presumably to make you feel at ease. They then send you an email with a link to a pdf that has a list of the available buses, where you pay the 20-or-so-dollars through a payment portal link in a language we couldn't read, so Google translated.

So, we hand over our credit card details and hope.

Me thinking about all the TVs and crypto that’s about to be bought on my credit card, none by me.

The bus-WhatsApp-man then messages us back - SUCCESS! We have made a booking. We just need to be in our hotel’s reception the next morning. Nice.

So, the morning comes, we're waiting outside with our backpacks on, 10 minutes early like the chronically punctual people we are.

10 minutes pass. Then 20. Uh-oh.

Just as we're about to give up, a man riding a motorbike rolls up yelling and pointing "Bus over there! You get on and I will take you there!" Not ones to disagree with that kind of energy, Lisa hops on the back of the motorbike and speeds off, destination unknown.

We joke about it now, but this moment felt genuinely terrifying.

Travel in Vietnam is, above all else, an act of faith.

I'm left there standing by myself, wondering if I'll ever see my wife again. A few moments later another motorbiker rolls up telling me to get on. The chronic people pleaser that I am, I oblige happily, and off we go.

We zoom through Hanoi at the speed of light, my driver texting the bus company while talking on the phone to the cruise company all while dodging oncoming traffic one handed. It was a tremendous show of skill. I was terrified.

We go to the outskirts of town, through a tunnel, and at this point I'm absolutely thinking “well, it's been a good run.”

Artists reinterpretation.

Then, we turn the corner, and HALLELUJAH, my wife is there, delicious bao already in hand, and so is the bus.

Faith rewarded.

A bao is a sign of happiness, despite the look on her face.

We, and about 20 other travelers, hop on this mini-bus and start making our way to the tiny Cat Ba Island. The whole time the bus driver and the guide are texting and talking on the phone to the various tour companies, confirming that their customers arrived safely. It feels nice to be taken care of.

2 hours later we stop in the middle of nowhere to pick up some breakfast. Seeing as there's no bathroom on the bus, we decide not to risk it. Going hungry and thirsty is better than the other option.

4 hours? Sure. Sure…

Back on the bus for another hour until the bus pulls onto... a boat? They have us all get off the bus because they can't open the door once we're parked in on the ferry, so we all grab all our stuff and take in the first view of Cat Ba Island from the very slow ferry.

We notice that there's an absolutely monumental cable car that goes there too. Not working yet, but will be in a month.

Once we get off the ferry, we board the bus again, and drive another 30 minutes to the main town, where we are shuffled into the overnight cruise operators office to check in.

Back on another bus, to a small boat, to a kayak, and then to, finally, our boat for our Bay cruise.

In total, 7 different modes of transportation to make it a small island just over 200km from where we started, Hanoi.

Whew.

This cable car is going to incredible when it’s finished.

Bus #3. Or 4? 4.

The small boat that bring us to…

The bigger boat which…

…rewarded us with this delicious lunch :)

It's just incredible how the whole system works - first of all, it depends fully on WhatsApp. I think that if WhatsApp ever had an outage, the entire country would just close down.

Secondly, there are so many different conversations happening at all times to ensure that everyone is where they need to be that it feels like all of the staff is always texting. Counting, recounting, re-recounting, calls to the tour organizer, calls to the boat operator, text to the bus drivers. The logistics and amount of people involved in a simple bus ride is staggering.

it do be like this sometimes

Thirdly - the problem solving skills on display here are nothing short of incredible. We learned that the bus we first got on had to park so far away because the streets of Hanoi were shut down for a marathon and road work being down that day.

Obviously the fastest solution was to use a few motorbikes and shuttle everyone individually from their hotels to the bus. You see that type of ingenuity and work ethic all over the place here. If it's possible, it's already being implemented. No decision making by a committee, just solving problems with what they have. I find it really inspirational.

he’s solving another problem on whatsapp at the same time

We did make it to our cruise, and had the best time. And, once we understood how things run here in Vietnam, we found ourselves relaxing into the flow of life and the inner workings of public transportation here.

Vietnam is many things, but boring is certainly not one of them.

It's a miracle it all works as smoothly as it does - that's a testament to the hard working and super sharp people that make it all happen. And the faith of everyone else around to just trust that it does in fact work. And, now that we've found a way to understand the system, it's all a lot of fun.

We haven't tried the trains here yet, but will in a few days. Booking that was much easier, via 12go, and I'm hopeful that it will be a significantly simpler journey. I mean, it's a train, how bad could it go?

I'm not sure the Vietnamese style of travel is for everyone, but once we understood how it worked, it's actually mesmerizingly efficient and quite an adventure.

That's all for this week! See you in the next one :)

We love this place so much.

Today

Hopping on a train from Hue to Da Nang, and then on to Hoi An in Vietnam. The public transportation experience continues.

The (Near) Future

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See you next week…ish :)

- josh (and lisa)

Oh, and if you want to learn how we afford to take all these trips after quitting our jobs 3 years ago, you’ll likely be interested in our Skillshare course on Travel Hacking and Frequent Flier Miles.

Check it out here: https://skl.sh/3UzMqUx

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