An adventure in finding what it truly means to live life to the fullest

Myself and a friend had just arrived in Vietnam only a few days prior and had befriended a German backpacker. Over a few ba ba ba (333) beers We all agreed we will travel up the Vietnamese Coast together. That afternoon amongst the insanely busy streets of ho chi min admits the blood like motorcycles that course through vein that make up this concrete jungle a huge and spacious bus awaits our filling. This trip seems like the perfect start to an adventure we would soon be telling our children's children, but something happened that would stay with me for life. A lesson, the bus was headed to Nha trang, a village about 8-9 hrs drive from ho chi min, so we clicked our seats into recline and slowly drifted off to the dulsat tones of Vietnamese talk back. And the POKE POKE. The bus had stopped and as we awoke I felt the stabbing pains what turned out to be the bus driver jabbing me with his keys. The bus was empty and no one but my 2 friends. It was 3am and pitch black outside. Apparently we has reached Nha trang..... Or so we thought. The bus driver helped us off the bus and bought us our cliche backpacker backpacks. So like the day we were born we stood there still adjusting our eyes after waking up thinking Nha trang is small what's more the only sign of life was the copious amount of rats running through the gutters. Being 3am you can imagine that the village was non responsive to our arrival. As we wondered the streets with our rat comrades we could only help but laugh and cring at the idea of little sleep and no solution to our abrupt bus stop. As some time went on we stumbled across a group of young fishermen that couldn't speak a word of English. All we could do was sit with these early risers and wait for more forms if life to emerge sand maybe help us. We soon realised that fishermen friends were using their rat buddies as bait for the fish. We stay their until the sun rose over the South China Sea. Each of us had a go at fishing, I found it some what therapeutic and disconnecting from our busy western life's. As the sun lit up the coast it was if a painter had thrown off the drapes on a masterpiece. We were not in Nha trang but nue Mea, a beach side village 3 hrs from where we thought we were. Upon receiving this news we didn't react as to how I thought we would. We were relaxed and happy. We were all the better for the off track experience. As 18 year olds we had truly experienced what it meant to be on an adventure, a great day and a great trip.