See what befell me in the quiet mountains of Laos.
Bus Ride or Hell: You decide (3 April 2006)Ohmygoodness, I just had the bus ride from hell! What started out to be a 22 hour busride from Vientiane, the capitol of Laos to Danang Vietnam, turned out to be a 28 hour busride from hell...
It all started off badly. We were scheduled to leave at 7:00 pm from Vientiane. We arrived at the station around 6:30, settled into our seats and got ready for take off. We sat and sat and sat....There was a little Vietnamese lady who kept yelling at us, apparently about some boxes that she was taking on the bus (which they stack 10 high in any availible seat) which one of the Canadians who I was riding with was sitting to close to or something like that. She kept yelling at them and swishing her hands around, trying to get them to move to another seat. And then she was doing the same to me. What I understood from her is that she wanted me to move over and sit with an Australian girl so she could have two seats to herself. Now that did not seem fair to me, so I did not move and she kept giving me dirty looks for the rest of the ride (let's not forget, that was a 28 hr ride!)
We stopped for food with no problems and then got back onto the bus. I had just curled up on my (two) seats when I was poked repeatedly on the shoulder by a young boy who was apparently the spokesperson for the crazy woman. He again tried to get me to move over, but I again refused.
The bus was filled with boxes (what I did not understand was that there was a perfectly good roof rack on the top of the bus which was not being properly utilized) and bags and little plastic stools. I later came to find out, once we all settled down to sleep, that the stools were meant for spreading in the aisles and sleeping on. So we slept. The bus stopped at a reststop some time around 3 and parked for 3 hours before heading on down the road. The reason for this is that the border doesn't open until 7. Now WHY didn't the bus just leave Vientiane at 10 rather than 7?
We arrived at the border and...once again sat and sat. First we waited for it to open, then we had to wait in a huge queue (wait - it wasn't really a queue - it was a mass of people) to get our passports checked, and then we had to walk to Vietnam and wait again to get our passports checked. Then we sat and sat and sat while the bus was....(??) waiting in line to get checked, getting checked...something like that. Oh and then I had to transfer busses. It took over 3 hours. We arrived at the border at 6:30 and finally left at 10 something. We got about 5 km down the road and the bus broke down. So we sat there for about another hour.
Let me also explain the bus. It was a local bus which means: no A/C -only windows, no stopping for smoking - people were just doing it in the bus, again, boxes piled EVERYWHERE - this means under the seat, under my feet, behind, above and below me, and mostly Vietnamese people (I was one of 6 foreigners and then we transferred busses and i was 1 of 3) which is no problem in fact I like it, it makes me really feel like I am in a foriegn county instead of being with people who I could be with at home, but it means that nobody speaks English so you have to just guess at everything.
After the breakdown there were really no problems except that I saw a bucket of pigsfeet soaking in water right near the toilets and I thought how glad I am that I am a vegetarian...
We arrived in Danang at 11:30 pm (we had been scheduled to arrive at 5 pm). To me it looked like everything was closed and I was a bit worried about getting a place to stay. When the bus arrives in the city, the only way into the center is via motorbike. This is fun, especially when you have a 50 lb backpack on your back. Somehow with my terrible (non existent) Vietnamese and their terrible English, I explained to them that I needed a cheap hotel somewhere in the city center. It must have worked, becuase they took me to just what I needed. It was not as cheap as it could have been - (gasp! it was 15 dollars) but they had a hot shower, comfortable bed, free internet and great coffee and baguettes (thanks to the French influence) so I was happy.
Vientiane, Laos: 2 April 2006I was told by a couple of fellow travellers that:
a) Vientiane is the only place with ATMS (which I have yet to see)
b) Vientiane is not really that exciting (it is the biggest city in Laos however, so it depends on what floats your boat)
Usually, if you are coming from Bangkok, the easiest way to get into Laos is to cross at Vientiane. I however, did not come from Bangkok, but instead crossed over at the North of Thailand at Chang Khong. So really there is no reason for me to be in Vientiane. Knowing that, I have decided to only stay here for a few hours. I took the bus down from Vang Vieng this morning and am taking another bus to Vietnam (Danang) this evening. All in all I will only have been in Vientiane for about 5 hours. So, from what I see, there is pretty good soup, the internet is not really very cheap and I did not find an ATM but I did find an exchange.
I also found a nice little guy named "V" who runs the P P Guesthouse and who is letting me store my bags and loaf on his couch and watch TV while I wait for my bus (granted, he did have on WWF Female wrestling which I am not particularly interested in). He also was nice enough to rub something similar to Vicks Vapo Rub on my toe when I came back into the guesthouse bleeding from an unfortunate accident with a sidewalk grate. Now I have never had Vicks Vapo Rub rubbed on a cut before and I expected quite a sting, but really it was no worse than iodine or the like. Funny, becuase the Thai and Laos people rub Tiger Balm on everything. I even read the back of the package after seeing a Thai woman rub some below her nose before going into a stinky bathroom (good idea, by the way! Except doesn't it make one's nose burn?). What the back of the package states is that tiger balm is good for "aches, pains, headache, constipation... now WHERE are you supposed to rub it if you are constipated, may I ask?
So my time in Vientiane is limited to learning:
a) if they do have ATMs I don't know where they are hiding them
b) whoever said Vientiene is not that exciting may be right unless you can count cutting your toe on a sidewalk grate and having a small Lao named V rub Vapo Rub on it exciting.
So now I am off on a 22 hour journey (hopefully more comfy than the one on the train to Bangkok) from Vientiane, across the border and into Vietnam. I arrive there tomorrow at 5 pm and I plan to check out the city a bit before heading down the coast towards Ho Chi Minh city.
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