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Published: February 18th 2007
We were sad to leave laos, but we were also so excited about going to vietnam. we had to get a local bus to the border 12 euro for the two of us not bad for a 8hour journey. On the bus journey we collected a chicken and a scooter they were both inside the bus we could not believe it.but, thats the norm here in laos. when we eventually got to the border we had to get a tuk tuk another 30km to get us to the crossing. we had not seen tourists in 2days so we were a bit curious the way we crossed is not the main way it was very interesting at the border there happened to be a tv crew there and they started to flim us getting our passports stamped. when we finally got in we had to find a bus so, to cut a long story short we ended up on a bus with 7 soliders all going home for the chinese new year it was very strange and sometimes a little scary but ,we asked them to leave us in the first town we arrived at the driver still wanted 10dollers for about
half an hour we were not going to annoy the army boys so, we just paided him and found ourselves in a town with no tourists and everyone staring at us chanting "hello, helllo, hello" even dogs barked at us we found a really nice guesthouse but nobody spoke english. we sorted a room out and the next adventure was trying to find food we ended up i think in a restaurant it was a tiny plastic playhouse table and chairs 3 kids were watching t.v and the dad pointed at some food we gave a tumbs up and found ourselves eating meat of some kind of animal???? noddle soup it was so funny the mum was trying to get the kid to sit on my lap but, he was more scared than i was so we decided we had enough excitment for one day and went to bed. the next day we got a bus to vinh once more the driver wanted 20 dollers we refused and got him down to 10 but he decided to leave us in a side of town away from the bus station so 2km walk later with our houses on our backs we
got on a mini bus to Hanoi (capital) we were still the only tourists on the bus the people are very different here in vietnam they always try to bleed tourists dry when it comes to money the rule is 5 times to much on everything so, the rule is to stick to a price yourself and walk they 8 times outta 10 they back down. i have never been so scared in a bus before the driver was nuts over taking constantly beeping all the way for 6 hours. we survived and made it alive to Hanoi and let me tell you this is a crazy city 5 million people live here there are people everywhere motorbikes dodge you the secret to crossing the street is slowly and let the bikes go around you its crazy but we love it. I promise i will add some photos very soon .
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Mez
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TV Crews
Hi Paddies, awesome pics as usual!!! As I recall you also encountered a telly crew on Robinson Crusoe...mmmm, maybe your destiny is beckoning? ;) Happy Travelling!