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Published: November 20th 2008
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Finally the time had come for me to leave Vietnam, in particular Hoi An where i had spent the last ten days enjoying the beach and the opportunity to have clothes hand made!
As for every bus trip i had booked in Vietnam i spent several days investigating prices to cross the border into Lao. I decided to go with a tour company that was run by a Vietnamese man who had lived for ten years in Ipswich - yes Ipswich in Suffolk!! Foolishly i though that having this experience of Suffolk in common would make him more trustworthy - so when he promised me the same bus would take me all the way across the border to Savannakhet i believed him!!
As planned i left Hoi An in the evening and traveled on the sleeper bus to Dong Ha - so far so good! However, when the bus stopped in Dong Ha it soon became clear that i was the only person getting off here, my ticket included one nights accommodation in Dong Ha and this is where things began to get interesting! As i got off the bus i was met by a local man who spoke
very little English but seemed to be implying that i was to stay with him, i decided that this must be the accommodation that the tour company had booked for me as it was too much of a coincidence otherwise. So i climbed on board the back of his bike with my backpack on my back and somehow managed to stay on the bike through some pretty serious off-roading down some dark country lanes. At this point i did begin to question how sensible i had to been to go with this stranger down a dark alleyway but i decided he was only small so i could always knock him out with my now extremely heavy backpack and make a run for it!! Anyway as it turned out there was no need, within 20mins we arrived at his house, much to the excitement of the local children (don't think they see many foreigners from their reactions to me!) and i was shown to a lovely clean room that would be mine for the night (with a lock on the inside in case you were worrying about me mum!!). However, this guy then announced in his very basic English that he
wanted 10dollars from me for the room! "No" i said "I have already paid". At this he began an extremely entertaining routine of jumping up and down going "no, no, no, no, 10 dollars". So i decided the best thing to do was to phone the agency and see what they said because i did not want to be ripped off but neither did i want this guy to lose out. At this point it became clear that he was just trying his luck, as i produced my phone the price of the room fell from 10 to 7 to 5 dollars and finally he said that i could have it for 3dollars if i got up early to clean his house!! Well everyone who knows me will know how allergic i am to cleaning of any kind and can guess what kind of a response i gave him!! So it was agreed i would pay nothing more for the room!
5.30am and we were back on the bike for yet another scary ride back to the bus collection point. However, the bus turned out to be a minivan that went all over Dong Ha on a mission to
see how many people could fit into its 12seats. At one point there were 18 people in the minibus plus luggage, good job Vietnamese people are only small!! Finally, after one tyre blow out and several stops later to complete various errands that the driver had to do, we arrived at the Lao border crossing and yes you guessed it the bus did not go across the border! So with my backpack i wandered out of Vietnam and into Lao. The actual border crossing couldn't have been easier, no one was remotely interested in me which is why i said i was wandering! And i got my 30day Lao visa with no problem and for the price i was expecting it to be! (Can you believe it something they told me was actually true!)
Once in Lao i began to look for this bus which i had apparently paid for which would take me the rest of the way to Savannakhet. But as i was expecting it was no where to be seen so i finally gave in to the ever persistent motorbike taxis and agreed to let them take me to the bus station - of course they
told me it was miles away but in fact i could of walked!! Here after several conversations the bus driver (who was a Lao version of Rab C. Nesbitt complete with string vest!) allowed me to travel on the local bus for free, already i was liking Lao!
The bus ride to Savannakhet took about 5hours and was very entertaining - apparently the number of seats on the bus does not dictate the number of passengers it can carry - out come the plastic chairs! And an unbelievable amount of stuff goes on to the roof of the bus too, and at each stop the bus is swamped by local women selling green beetles fried on a stick and squashed frogs! Thank god for my Oreo biscuits! But perhaps the most entertaining was the stop we had to make for the road side safety police, and no surprise they passed the bus and allowed it to continue despite the fact that even someone me could clearly spot just from a quick glance that nothing about this bus was safe!! Anyway it got me safely to Savannakhet.
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anonymous
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cleaning?!!!
Ha ha - little did they know how good your cleaning would have been! Good job he backed down. Did you try the fried beetles -they look lovely (not) xxx