Vietnam - Laos Border Adventures

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i don't think I've ever hd an epic a journey s the one Kev and I have just completed from Sapa in North Vietnam, to Luang Prabang in North West Laos. I had envisaged it taking us a while, but three days later, we've finally arrived at our destination, but because it's taken so long, we have to move on from here tomorrow if we're gonna get chance to do the tubing thing in Vang Vieng, which of course is a must if you visit Laos!!
We began our journey by being marched to the bus by someone from our Hotel in Sapa. She got the place where we were catching the bus wrong, so we had to double back on ourselves and walk for ages to get to the bus, this was rubbish, but en-route, we did see the tinist kitten in the world just hanging out on a varanda. We then got on the bus and were surprised to find 5 other westeners with us! We'd been told no tourists used this service. We got underway, I'd managed to get the chair with the least amount of legroom possibly imagined but settled back to listen to some Harry P for a couple of hours. 10 hours later we were still going, having had several stops for the mudslides to be cleared out of the way for traffic to pass. at around 11hours we had to stop because bulding work to important to be interrupted to let traffic pass to continue and we were there for about 45mins until work stopped for the day. We finally got in to Dien Bien Phu at around 11pm. We all then went to find accommodation and have dinner. The Pho restaurant owner guessed (wrongly of course) that we were all German and attempted to show off by communicating to us in German. Luckily there was a guy who could make convo with her, which made her happy!
The next day there was not a timetabled bus over the border, but we were all eager to get under way so had agreed to meet up at 9am to get a taxi over the border. Kev and I, not fancying Pho for breakfast (i had completely lst any love of this when it was the only thing i could get in hospital)walked around for ages to find a source of breakfast, and finally in a corner of the market found someone making dough - twists (aka deep fried doughnut twisty things) AMAZING! Definitely what i needed, a sugary carb filled non soupy meal. Yum. Then we got a taxi, it could only take us to the immigration office so we then had to walk to Tay Trang. A 3 km walk uphill with all our bags. Fun. Then when we crossed the border, it was a 3 km hike down to the visa check point. More Fun. After this, I was defo ready to collapse, not spend $35 getting a visa, and finding out, that yes this was an official border crossing, and no, there really wasn't many other people who used it, and the only transport availble was $150. I did not sign up for this. We hung around for 2 hours, not really knowing what to do. None of us really fancied hiking 75km to the nearest small town, and we certainly didnt want to fork out for the offered transport.
But then, the luckiest thing happened. Two men in a 4x4 turned up, and they wre heading to where we wanted to go. Muang Khua (?). All 6 of us crammed into the back of it and $60 was the required fee. We arrived in the second village (about 20km from the border) and got a flat tyre. None of us wanted to stay here the night, so all tried offering helpful advice when the man couldn't unscrew his nuts. The solution to this arrived in the form of a massive pole making a better lever with which to losen the nuts. The Jack was the tiniest thing ever, so we all expected the man fixing the tyre (replacing the popped tyre with one with no grip!) to be squashed, but it all went well, and we had the added entertainment of the audience of local Laos peeps coming to watch what was going on AND a Sow feeding her litter of extreemely hungry ssqueeling piglets. When all was sorted we were offered some happy (Red bull) juice and we proceeded on our way. The next obsticals were in the forms of Massive rivers cutting across the road. We did expect the jeep to be washed away, but it managed to pass safely across all rivers, although at some points water did come in through the door frame! I had difficulty preventing myself being knocked out as the car bumped and swirved down the rough muddy "road". but it was all pretty exciting!
We arrived at the small town at around 6.30pm (just as the alloted 3 hours of exectricity a day was to begin) and got rooms at a lovely little guest house there. We went to get dinner, which took an AGE to come out, Kev ordered a special Laos meat salad in about 10 minutes and the rest of us had to wait 45 before ours came. Looong! We then saw the two guys who'd brought us down the mountainside, and they were heading back up it again, in the dark. Mentallists! We all wondered why they'd come in the first place, only to leave after 3 hours.
After an early night, Kev and I were heading off on our journey again (baby steps all the way!) we hopped on a very narrow boat down the mekong for 6 hours. This was fine till it started raining at which point i decided it was silly to be listening to my ipod...due to it not loving the wet. The journey was beautiful and definitely a nice change from buses for a bit. Although we got a mini bus from Nom keo (?) which was another 4 hours. So all in all, a pretty epic journey to get here. We had a lot of fun on our different modes of transport, but we reckon it was better than just sitting on a bus for 30 hours. Even if it does mean we're a little pushed for time on the rest of our visit in Laos.
Tomorrow we go to Vang Vieng for tubing. Pretty excited to be not on antibiotics and so able to drink again. And what better place to do it than whilst floating down a river on a rubber tube 😉

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