Andy, Alone

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Pace is the Trick

Right, seems like a while since the last blog, and even if it wasn't I've def got plenty to say which I am going to endevor to do fairly quickly. As I write now I'm sitting in the town of Vang Vieng in Laos, and as of yesterday morning, when Rick and Lisa moved on, I am officially a lone traveler! Even though we basically sprinted through the rest of Vietnam in order to see all the places we wanted (which we just about managed as I will expand on below) time was still catching up with them and as they are hoping to make it all the way through China and into Japan it was time for them to put their foot down even more. I on the otherhand now have about a week and a half more in Laos before I need to be in Chang Mai (Thailand) to meet another mate (Dizzy), so untill then at least I'm doing things on my own!

Anyway, to quickly round up the rest of Vietnam: After leaving my birthday and the beautiful Hoi An behind, we moved on to spend one night in the historic City of Hue which was pretty nice although not too much to report. Saw the ancient walls and had a fantastic curry! Following that we took a 12 hour coach journey north to the capital Hanoi. Not as big or busy as Saigon in the South we mainly used Hanoi as a base to visit the two places we really wanted to see up in the North. Halong Bay and Sapa. Halong Bay is a few hours to the East of Hanoi set in the South China Sea. Its amazingly beautiful and our trip allowed us 3 days and two nights (one of which spent sleeping on a boat) to cruise around taking in the awesome Karst scenary of the rocks/mountiains which just soar out of the sea. We also climbed a mountain and then a rickety old observation tower on top which was geniunly frightening as you could see down through the stairs but I've got quite a funny video of us freaking out and enoying the view from the top! Overall the trip was very chilled out and alot of fun as we had a good group of people with us so had some good banter as well with a couple of Ozzie girls, two canadians and an american lad. Anyway, I loved it. We arrived back in Hanoi in the evening of the third day which gave us just a couple of hours to sort ourselves before jumping on a sleeper train to take us to the northern mountain town of Sapa. This was also brilliant, very remote and home to loads of minority tribes, who speak their own languages and have their own separate traditions etc. We had our own mountain guide called Khu who was a local girl about the same age as us who took us through the hills and villages and was generally hilarious, so again, another great trip.

By the time we got back to Hanoi we had just one day left before leaving for what we believed would be a 16hour sleep bus all the way over the border to Lao capital, Vientiane! We took the opportunity on our last day to check out Ho Chi Minh, the former Vietnamese leader who is a national hero here, is on all the bank notes, and who's dead body is still preserved in perfect condition through an complicated freezing process, 40 years after his death. Its free to go and look round it, which thousands of Vietnamese people do every day, and although you can only see him for about 30 seconds as you are ushered round, its a very eeire experience. Anyway, the evening rolled on and we headed to the bus station to get on our coach. The folloing 24hours of my life were to be hell. The bus turned out to be some kind of local, 50 year old coach (not a bed in sight) which was filled with so much stuff (People/baggage/hundreds of T-shirts/non-discript sacks, which were really warm and smelled pretty bad) all cluttered and stuffed down the isles. We set of in discomfort which quickly got worse as we began to pick up anyone who happened to flag us down. By about midnight there must have been nearly 70 people crammed on there, up and down the isles, two hammocks swinging from the overhead storages. The only next logical step would have been for us to grap some livestock and squeeze it on somewhere, not that there was any space. Mix all this in with a loss of power and a breakdown in the middle of nowhere, the night was one of the longest and most uncomfortable of my life, sleep was not an option. On top of this all we found out we had been really overcharged and mis-sold for the trip we were now taking, the only thing to do was laugh, cry, then laugh again! I could rant and elaborate on this journey a lot more but suffice to say it was awful, at least in hindsight its pretty funny but not something I'm queueing up to do again in a hurry.

Anyway, nearly 24hours after leaving our Hotel in Hanoi we arrived in Vientiane to begin the Laos strech of the adventure. I've been here about a week now and having a great time but I think I've written quite enough already for today so will probably cover the whole of Laos in the next blog. As always, as always, as always, thanks for reading. I hope you are all well, happy and enjoying whatever you're up to. It might be cold in England but at least you have what I now realise to be a heavenly public transport system!

Speak soon and stay in touch,

Andy!

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