Thanh Hoa (1-2 Nov 12)

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Goodbye Laos, Hello Vietnam!

After almost one month in the Land of Million Elephants, I took the long bus ride through mountaneous terrain to cross the Nam Xoi-Na Meo border into Vietnam. I had read several horror stories on online travel forums about this particular border crossing, about foreigners getting ripped off by bus drivers and immigration officials, one even being left behind at the border! So I tried to prepare myself for the worst. Crossing the border turned out to be relatively straightforward process, though I'm not so sure about the arduous, winding 9h bus ride terminating in Thanh Hoa, some 135km south of Hanoi. A British couple that I'd met in Vieng Xai was on the bus with me, and they decided to continue with the 4h ride to Hanoi, but I thought I'd spend the night in Thanh Hoa, having had enough travelling for one day.

It was about 6-ish in the evening when I arrived in Thanh Hoa, but it felt like the dead of the night, cos all the streetlights were out, and everyone seemed to be getting by on candlelight! It's a relatively large city, so the scene of pitch blackness all-around was quite puzzling to me, and brought back visions of "black-out Burma". It turned out that the entire city was indeed experiencing a temporary black-out, but the full force of the lights were back on again a couple of hours later.

The prosperity in Thanh Hoa is quite obvious, with a couple of skyscrapers, several banks and fashionable sidewalk cafes, and certainly a stark contrast to the remote mountains of Northern Laos that I just left behind. And Vietnam's much larger population is also obvious, there are many more people (and motorbikes) in the streets, though Thanh Hoa is still definitely very much just a secondary city in Vietnam. In any case, this was just a quick over-nighter for me, before I continued onward to Hanoi the next day,

Stayed at Lan Anh Hotel.

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Photos

Thanh Hoa
The plaza during the day -- sprawling, communist-style , complete with the required red banners of (presumably) revolutionary socialist slogans, right in front of the row of banks of course.

Na Meo Border
First glimpses of Vietnam.

Na Meo
Gritty little border town. I'd read about many a foreigner being stranded here after crossing from Laos, and having to figure out ingenious and make-shift ways of getting to the closest major town. Glad I don't have such a story to share.

Na Meo to Thanh Hoa
Not without the obligatory semi-truck breakdown obstruction delay.

Na Meo to Thanh Hoa
Picking up right where we left of in Northern Laos, in terms of scenery anyway.

Thanh Hoa
Some kind of handicraft sale in the plaza at night.

Baguette Woman
After living on fried rice and pho (noodle soup) for several days for breakfast in Northern Laos, I was happy to be able to revert to bread and eggs again!