HeidiandBon

Before I digress about our time in Nha Trang I must first tell you of our time in Saigon waiting for the overnight train. We left our bags in the travel place had a drink and I decided that I wanted to sit in the park for a while and watch the locals who gather in their hundreds some running, some just chatting and a few playing badminton. We'd only been sat for about a minute when a young lad came over and started chatting. I was obviously sceptical at this point he said all the stuff that sends alarm bells ringing! I'm a student studying English and where are you from etc etc. Then two other lads came and sat right in front of us and at this point I was clutching my bag tightly ... read more

The bus journey from Cambodia to Vietnam was failry uneventful apart from the usual chaos with assigned seats being sat in by somebody else etc. The actual border crossing was easy as long as you already had a VISA, you weren't allowed on the bus without one. We just handed our passports over once on board and got them back once we were in Vietnam more or less....SIMPLE....and at no extra charge (take note Cambodia). Saigon or Ho Chi Minh city was just a couple of hours away....but already you could see just how different Vietnam was. It is much more developed than Cambodia....with the usual attractive scenery etc. The roads were smoother and wider a huge improvement. Saigon itself is huge and scooters are everywhere....still feel uneasy driving through the cities here even as a ... read more

We left Don Det early, just as we were boarding the boat for the mainland it decided to pour down and we got well and truly soaked. When we arrived on land Bon went looking for breakfast leaving me sheltering from the rain under a little metal shack. Suddenly hoards of people started boarding the waiting bus and I was torn between jumping on, the bus leaving without Bon and being stranded with no money and Bon being stranded with no luggage, or waiting and having to spend the 12 hour bus journey sitting next to some stranger....dilema. Bon always goes at he worst times!!! I suddenly saw him walking up the street and ran onto the bus, there was only a few seats left but luckily there were two together. We headed to the border, ... read more

The trip to Vientiane was a fairly easy one! It's only a 3 hour drive or so, what seemed to take longer was rounding up the passengers just to drop us a few minutes walk from where we started...a laughing point for much of the journey. We even managed to suss out where we were as we arrived...so no need for a tuk tuk we set off in the direction of a guest house we'd read about. After a short walk.....we arrived.....it looked very nice. Asked about the rooms....and they were way beyond our budget. Not phased we set off to another which sounded reasonable.....a sign outside said 'FULL'. In the heat with backpacks....a 5 minute walk seems like 60 minutes. So we gave up with the guidebook and just jumped inside the first guesthouse we ... read more

We woke up and had our breakfast and collected the pack-lunch that our guest house had provided and made our way to the boat, nice and early in order to get a good seat. We were looking for our boat number from the day before.....but got pointed towards a different boat. We had read somewhere that quite often they switch boats so we weren't that surprised. We were however a bit surprised at just how different this boat was!! Gone were the nice seats.....the space......all replaced by wooden benches one after the other (Would our bums survive the 8 hour journey!!!). We were reluctant to get on and kept saying "boat 10, boat 10" but they would just reply "Louang Prabang" and point, so we boarded the boat. When we eventually got on we saw the ... read more