The Journey from Laos to Vietnam

Our journey from Laos to Vietnam was such a tale of woe, that we reckoned it merited its own special little entry. Unfortunately, there are no pictures to go with this blog, but if there had been, they would have shown two fairly unhappy chappies!

The day started out reasonably enough - we were picked up on time by boat at ten in the morning, and got across the Mekong without any trouble. We were supposed to be met by a bus here that would take us to Pakse, slightly further north in Southern Laos. The bus eventually arrived, about forty minutes late, so we climbed aboard and got going. Unfortunately, the bus ran out of diesel about half an hour from Pakse. Nothing to worry about - the driver borrowed a scooter, went to the nearest petrol station and returned with a can of fuel within about half an hour. The only problem was that the fuel he had purchased, and subsequently put into the bus, was petrol. After about forty minutes of scratching his head, he phoned the bus station in Pakse, who sent out another bus to collect us. I should imagine that the bus driver is still there now, scratching his head and wondering what to do - certainly not over-furnished in the brains department.

Anyway, after the fuel debacle, we arrived at the bus station in Pakse about two hours late - unfortunately, it turned out to be the wrong bus station - a good forty minutes from the one we needed. After a few strong words, the bus company agreed to pay for a tuk-tuk to take us to the other station, and this went without a hitch, barring a slight detour to the local school, so the driver could pick up his son.

So we arrived at the correct bus station, with about two hours to spare. This was when we clapped eyes on the vehicle which was to take us on our overnight journey from Pakse to Hue, in Vietnam. It was a rotter. When we booked, we’d be assured of a nice air conditioned coach, with reclining seats and the works - however, it was quite the opposite. We nervously poked our heads through the door and took in the air - it stank!

Rather than boarding the bus earlier than we possibly had to, we decided to pop across to the bus station food place to grab a bite to eat. All they had was rice, veg and chicken, so I asked for a full works for me (light on the veg) and the same for Lauren, but without chicken. The woman nodded, so I walked away confident of having ordered correctly. The food arrived - my plate looked great, lots of chicken and rice, with a smidgen of greens on the side for show. Lauren’s plate, however, came through with rice, an unidentifiable meat, and some greens laced with pork! Lauren, convinced I had ordered this for her on purpose stormed of and ordered her own plain rice, leaving me to scoff down these two huge plates of rice, meat and greens! The unidentifiable meat was very tasty, but unlike anything I’d ever eaten before, leading me to believe that I may have made my first foray into the delights of the canine.

Following our delightful meal, we boarded the bus, and were allocated seats towards the back. From where our seats were, to the back of the bus, all the seats had been removed in order to make room for all the various stuff that was coming with us on our journey. This included massive 10kg bags of rice (also stored in all the foot wells to further reduce the pitiful amount of leg room), plastic chairs and massive bags of rotting fruit! Not only was the bus dark, damp and dingy, but it smelt of both the rotten fruit and cigarette smoke, as smoking on public busses is still perfectly acceptable out here - as is gobbing, making it very easy to slip on greenies whilst walking down the aisle in the middle.

Anyway, we finally got away at half past six in the evening - far too many people for the bus, meaning that the plastic chairs were put down the aisles for people to sit on! We were due to hit the border with Vietnam the following day at roughly six in the morning, so we had a good twelve hours to look forward to in this bus from hell. After travelling for about seven hours - lots of sweating, but no sleeping, we pulled up on the side of the road, and the engines were turned off. Someone explained to me in broken English that we’d arrived at the Vietnamese border already, and had to wait for six hours for it to open! Needless to say, we didn’t manage to get much sleep and were extremely glad to get of the bus in the morning.

Having managed to get across the Lao Bao border into Vietnam, and get our visas sorted, which in itself was a two-hour ordeal, including a medical check to test whether we had swine flu, we walked back to the bus to find that everything had been taken off the bus due to an infestation of rats which had gone through all the bags of rotten smelling fruit! No problem though, as the bus company transferred us onto someone else’s minibus, which was to take us on to Hue.

After about an hour and a half on this particularly cramped minibus, we arrived at another town, Dong Ha, where we were transferred onto yet another minibus (again with more people that there were seats available), and were driven for another hour and a half through the pouring rain before we finally arrived in Hue at noon, with extremely sore arses, exactly twenty six hours after we had started. We got our bags out of the boot of the minibus and discovered that the boot had a leak, and our bags and all their contents were totally soaked through!

After looking around briefly for another bus or a taxi to take us into Hue town centre, it became apparent that the only way to make the four mile journey into town was on the back of a motorbike. This being the case, we each climbed on a bike, with our small bags on our backs, and our massive rucksacks precariously balanced between the legs of the driver, and made it into town. Absolutely shattered we went to the nearest bar and both had large beers and pizzas before finding some accommodation and sleeping!