Monday, February 7, 2011

Le: Bus Driver #1


(PICTURE: Le, our driver.)

I'd like to take today and say a big thank you to Le, our bus driver. For one, he got us everywhere safe and sound. For anyone who has set foot in Vietnam, you'll know that 99% of bus drivers have a death wish. They usually speed up when they should slow down, drive in the wrong lane just because they're the bigger vehicle and they tend to swerve a lot just to see how many passengers can fall down. Le did none of these things.

Secondly, he was always willing to do little things for us that he wasn't contractually obligated to do. For example, he picked up and dropped off the over 35s who were staying at a hotel and not in the stilt houses.

Thirdly, he did some BIG things for us that he didn't have to do. Specifically, he was willing to drive the bus down some pretty small roads in order to pick us up the day after our trek. Nobody wanted to walk back 25KM so having to just walk 1KM was awesome.

Throughout the whole trip Le kept smiling and had a really good attitude. He kept telling Huyen how easy of a trip we were -- clearly because he couldn't speak English. Anyway, a big shout out and thank you to Le!


(PICTURE: Le and me on the way back from Mai Chau.)