Advertisement
Published: March 5th 2007
On the road
As most of my evening seemed to be spent, amongst the hoards of motorbikesAfter our escapades in the forest we were taken back to the sleepy town of Huay Xai, where the base was. Christmas had been something different and now I had to think of something to do for the impending New Year. We all had to head back to the larger town of Luang Praban anyway but instead of catching the next day's slowboat with the rest of the group; I figured I'd delay my journey by a day so I could catch the speedboat back. There was an ulterior motive to this, it also meant that I'd be able to hang back and watch my beloved West Ham play live on TV; surely they would win this time! (They lost 2-1 and I didn’t even get to see the game in the end).
The next day, however, I ran into a spot of bother. Someone told me that there are only 2 ATM machines in Laos, and even those are fairly recent additions. Normally you can get money out in one of the banks with a passport and card, but they are only in the bigger towns. I was running dangerously low on cash and, despite having the money in
my account, I had no way of access to it. The town 'bank' turned me down flat. It seemed that I'd have to get the 2 day slow boat with all the other losers after all as I couldn’t afford the speedboat. Only problem with this was having to pay an overnight accommodation stay. I was in the right place for money to go far though. After paying for my ticket and hotel bill, I had a grand total of $10 to last me 2 days. All of a sudden things didn’t seem as cheap as they once were, I cursed myself (and West Ham) for delaying my trip and waving goodbye to friends. I bought 2 days worth of drinking water and scoured the village for cheap eats I could take with me. Jam sandwiches won the contest, I bought 3 of those and one marmalade for a bit of variety. I would ration these to last the day and purchase as much as I could the following day after paying accommodation in the stopover village. Sorted.
I think only in Asia could I get by on so little and because of the kindness of other backpackers I
even managed to have a beer or 2. The slow boat isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Its pretty cool gliding down the Mekong River taking in the views and the boat's full of backpackers getting pissed and swapping stories. Luckily for me, the gibbon experience isn’t that widely known about so I was able to arouse a bit of envy and annoy people with my "you really should turn back and do it" advances. I bore witness to an age old scam when, whilst unloading our bags for the stopover, one of our party’s bags was missing. He challenged the operators with this but got little more than shrugged shoulders and 'don’t know' glances. Being quite drunk and knowing how things can work over here, he reached into his pocket and surrendered a handful of cash over to one of the locals. His bag was back with him in minutes. I don’t think that’s a fair reflection on occurrences here though, and I maintain that it’s just pretty unlucky for that to happen.
Another day on the boat and a bonus extra jam sandwich for me as I'd found someone to share the overnight room with to save on money. Arriving in Luang Praban, I rushed to the bank, got my wad of cash and went on a cake and pancake-related spending spree. It was good to be back. However, I still had to decide on my new year's destination. Vietnam was next on my list but I found out that it was a 24 hour coach ride away, with the starting point being back on Vientiane. I would never make it for New Year’s Eve that way. Even though I knew people would were going to spend it back in Vang Viang (the place I did tubing), I really didn’t want to go back on myself. So by air it would have to be. I visited two travel agents who both told me it was too late, there were no tickets left and they couldn’t process my visa in time. Third place lucky, not only could they get me on a December 31st plane, they could get my visa sorted within 6 hours. With these people, there is always a way and I'd say their will is business. This would mean, however, that I would have to take chances with 'Laos Airlines'. I had met someone previously who had imparted to me the dangers of this airline. The general consensus is that people shouldn’t use the domestic flights due to concerns over maintenance procedures. Luckily for me, this was an international flight so I needn’t worry myself with the domestic concerns. Despite a fair of turbulence, the flight was fine and the safety procedures run through was more interesting than usual. As with all budget airlines; no life jackets here, that’s what your seat cushion is for.
I got talking some people waiting for luggage and agreed to share a taxi from the airport. Although I'm quite happy talking to anyone I can’t deny that there can be the incentive of a split taxi fare to conversations at airports/coach stations. We had landed later than planned and so I knew time was an even more precious commodity with it being New Year's Eve. We accepted a local's offer of taxi which, once seen, clearly wasn’t a taxi. Didn’t really matter, the 2 local fellas seemed nice enough and we agreed on a price for central Hanoi. Someway through the journey, the car stopped just before a toll to enter the bridge. The driver then explained to us that he needed money to cover the toll on top of the agreed $5. 400,000dong extra to be precise. That’s roughly the equivalent of $25 and we were being scammed. Twenty minutes of protracted conversations and the driver is getting extremely upset. Despite him then kindly offering 'to pay half' of what he was originally trying to charge us, we decided that this guy wasn’t to be trusted further and best thing would be to get out of the car. This seemed to take an age and we had to get past his stubborn protests to get him to open the boot for access to our bags. We payed him the agreed $5 in full but he was still upset and even shed a few tears. What a nutter, I guess this scam meant a lot more to him than your usual con artist. None of this is big money back home of course but no-one wants to be cheated out of money. This had happened to me at the start of my trip in India to tune of $40 I'm embarrassed to say, and so it makes me a bit more suspicious in general.
Getting away from the nutter and walking with our backpacks, we had no idea where we were and other cabs were not on offer. It was now getting towards evening and we were lost, this was not how I wanted to spend New Year. After offering us everything under the sun, some toothless blokes on mopeds offered to take us into town, but not after some fierce haggling. Didn’t really trust these guys but the only alternative involved picking a direction and walking. They took us further into town, but nowhere near where we asked. It’s was now dark, we'd still got a way to go and had the added pressure of finding a place to stay. The guys I'm with are good blokes but I was getting annoyed with the situation, we had already agreed to find accommodation together and opinions on how to do this were divided. I knew I'd find a place for one person much quicker but couldn’t quite jump ship. Hotels, hotels, and more hotels. Its New Year, they're all full. One guy replies to our room query with; "How much do you want to pay?". Stupid question and it received a stupid answer. It was now 8.30pm and we still hadn’t found anywhere. More blood-curdlingly terrifying than that, it was 8.30pm on New Year's Eve and I didn’t have a beer in my hand!
Finally, a lifeline. One of the owners of a hotel that is full has a brother who owns a place down the street. Better than that, his brother sends out mopeds to pick us up. Much appreciated, despite one of my mates being involved in a small collision. And the place? Incredible, best place I've stayed at. Would have to share the room but it had 3 double beds, and even a separate kitchen/reception room. $20 between us, we ripped his hands off. We could finally go out and have our celebrations. After the quietness of Laos, the polluted, busy, dirty city streets of Hanoi hit us. I loved it, perfect for partying. There are loads of bars to go to in Hanoi, pumping and bustling, and more importantly without curfew. The Vietnamese would laugh at that. They love to drink and we found many bars in party mood. Where to be for the traditional midnight countdown though? From my research about Hanoi nightlife on the pre-flight internet, one club cropped up more than most in recommendations; 'Apocalypse Now' sounded exactly where I wanted I to be when the clock struck midnight. We hail a taxi and ask if he knows the place, he starts imitating club dancing, he knows it but it’s a bit of a drive. This journey is our introduction to Hanoi drivers, this taxi thinks it’s a motorbike. When we get there, the taxi driver asks us if we want him to wait. "Don’t bother, we're gonna be quite some time" I say as unsmuggly as I can but not quite pulling it off. It becomes apparent what he was laughing at once we reach the door. The club sounds great from the outside but there's a problem and it would appear to be found in one of the two queues for the entrance. One was moving fast and one not moving at all. There are plenty of pleads and sums of money are offered but its no good. They're only letting locals in tonight, no westerners.
This wasn’t actually said, but you couldn’t not see it. I usually don’t mind this sort of thing to be honest, there are so many backpacking westerners crowding these parts that I think its perfectly fair for the locals to have places which would be there own and traditionally local. Especially with many westerners acting the way we do drunk sometimes. However, this time it’s extremely frustrating as we had just undertaken a fairly long journey out of town to get here and it’s already 11 O’clock. After conceding defeat to the doormen, we headed back into the main part in another deluded taxi. There was another place we'd heard that was good but we were certain our new year would be spent outside in a queue. It sounds stupid to be putting so much emphasis for being a in certain place for a certain time, but we'd been racing against the clock all day and it was all building up to the moment. That’s New Year for you I suppose. In the end, we got into a great place full of a mix of locals and westerners. The Vietnamese know how to have a good time, even if the midnight countdown was a little peculiar - 10 Vietnamese blokes in hotpants holding mini globes on a stairwell stage. Now I know what you’re thinking; 'Jim, that sounds like you were in a gay bar'. I wasnt, homosexuality is still a bit of a taboo here which is why it seemed so odd at the time. The people I was with decided to retire a bit early for the night if you ask me so I wandered out of the club and instructed the first motorbike bloke to take me somewhere good. I love being able to do this. He took me to a party on a boat that was still in full swing and he joined me in a few celebrationary drinks. All in all, Hanoi was an excellent place to spend New Year's, I’d recommend it. The first thing that struck me about the Vietnamese - which remained true - is that, whereas the Thais are a lot of fun and the Laotians very nice people, the Vietnamese are very cool.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.046s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 12; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0262s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
andrew corbett
non-member comment
Sydney contact
Hi Jim, just got an E-mail from a friend of mine, who's in Sydney. Her name's Kate Telford, she's been out there for 3 years+, she's from Essex and she's cute. Also sadly she has just broken up with her boyfriend......I mentioned that you would be in town and she said that she'd be happy to show you the ropes. Liam met up with her when he was out there. Her E-mail is Kate Telford [katetelford@hotmail.com].