Going on a tour in Vietnam

I’m not a big fan of going on organized tours, I simply prefer exploring places independently. But some places are either inaccessible to solo visitors, a good example being national parks in Africa, or going on an organized tour saves you time, trouble and money.

So after a day of sightseeing in Ho Chi Minh City I visited a few agencies and booked two tours. A day tour to Cu Chi tunnels and Cao Dai Temple and a two-day tour in the Mekong Delta. I would like to write about the latter in one of my next posts and in this one let me describe how a tour starts in Vietnam.

I was asked to arrive at the travel agency office at 7.45 am for my Cu Chi tunnels tour. The departure was at 8 am. Being a punctual person I turned up on time. I was the only person there. The guy checked my receipt and told me to board the bus waiting there. Two other guys appeared a few minutes later and got on. The bus left and it wasn’t even eight o’clock. A good start.

The bus, however, stopped at some other place. I thought we were going to pick up some more people. But no one was coming. Then I heard banging on the bus door which opened and some guy asked me to follow him. I was confused but I got off. Only then did I notice a T-shirt with the logo of the travel agency. He took me away on a motorbike and the other two guys stayed on the bus.

He dropped me off at some other place where there was a bunch of other people waiting, apparently for a tour, and he disappeared. After coming back he asked us to follow him. Then he left a few people at some other agency, I think they went on a different tour. The rest of us followed him not knowing where we were going.

We came to a bus station with loads of tourists, buses and guides or other employees of travel agencies. In the meantime I had found out I was the only one going on the Cu Chi tunnels tour, the other people were going on the Mekong Delta tour. Our guy started talking to other Vietnamese who, however, did not seem to want to talk to him. He was looking around with what I would describe as a desperate look on his face. I had no idea what to make of it. Did they have too few people for the tours and he was trying to squeeze us in with other operators? He was walking around, making phone calls, looking like a lost sheep. The buses were leaving and we were just waiting what would happen.

Then another bus came and after some discussion the guy told me to get on the bus. It seemed like he had found a spot for me. I felt relieved. I got on and waited. I saw the rest of the group follow the guy somewhere only to reappear five minutes later. In the end they ended up going somewhere by taxi, perhaps to another pick-up place. Poor guys. I have no idea if they went on the tour they paid for or not.

The bus I was on left the station at about 8.40 and in the next 15 minutes we picked up two more groups of people and then we finally headed out of the city. Long story short – organized tours in Vietnam = chaos, confusion, a lot of waiting nd running around like crazy people. You book with one agency, but you end up going with another. They shuffle tourists between each other perhaps because there are too many agencies. I ended up going with an agency called Peace and Happinness. Lovely! Even my Mekong Delta tour was interesting – I booked with one agency, went on the tour with a second one, but ended up with a third one on the second day of the tour. But I must say that my tour to CuChi tunnels and Cao Dai temple in Tay Ninh was really good. I enjoyed it.