The long journey....to laos.

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I might have been at my limit had we traveled any longer. I was pretty certain that my clothes had become so stiff with dust and dirt that they would mold to my body and I, in fact, would not be able to take them off, and that my teeth were begining to rot like the 5 year old who shared with us the back of his mother's pick-up truck. I became convinced that my next meals would consist only of the Ritz cheesy crackers that Jaime had stowed away in her purse before the journey began. I was pretty sure that my butt was comptelely bruised and that the locals could smell us even before the could hear our english coming. We were tired and cranky and falling asleep at the oddest moments, because the journey to laos, well, it was long.

When traveling, its all about time. Trying to make-up time, use time effeceintly, not waste time, make the most of our time. We had already went over our self-imposed allotted time in Vietnam by scheduling a side trip to the Vinh Moc Tunnels just north of the DMZ. We know we would have to make-up that day, because even in a 40 day vacation, there weren't any extra days to spread around. The best way to acquire extra time, without setting back your watches is to travel overnight. A simple concept, but done wrong can ruin the next day completely. We had already, somewhat successfully and somewhat unsuccessfully attempted the overnight bus trip. But those of us who are non-asian and non-vertically challenged, an overnight bus trip leaves you with about 30 minutes of sleep, zero leg room, bruises up and down your shins, and a vow never to do that again. So this time, on our last attempt to make-up time in Vietnam, we decided we would do it right.....get a hard sleeper (bed) on a slow train.

Early that morning, Eli and I hopped on to motobikes, to the train station. Up to this point there have been a series of conflicting reports on how in fact to get by train from Hue (just south of the DMZ) to the city of Vinh (about half-way to Hanoi, in North Vietnam). Our hotel guy said there was a train, several tourist offices said there wasn't and the random travel agency said there was but it arrived at 11pm, not the early morning we were hoping for. So the best to be certian was to go to the source. At the train station, we pushed ourselves to the ticket window (no lines in vietnam, either) and ordered up 3 nice comfy sleeper beds. Now, wouldn't this story be pretty boring istory f that is what we actually got. So never fear., we didn't. Because of the Chinese/Vietnamese New Year (TET for all you crossword junkies) everyone was traveling. TET is basically Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years Eve and your birthday all wrapped up in to one holiday. So everyone was going somewhere. So the sleepers were sold out. The soft seats were sold out. The only thing left was the "Hard Seat." Now, I have been on a few trains in China and throughout Europe and never have I seen a hard seat that was actually literally hard. I interpertated the hard seat to mean just second class, and heartingly convinced Eli that the Hard Seat was a sound option for our overnight travel that evening. I left feeling confident, that at least if it was bad, we could get up and walk around and there would be a bathroom available at any point in the trip. Two big pluses.

The train
Fast Foward to 8:30pm, as we, like cattle are herded into the train station platform. Just before the train arrives, I notice a ticket office has just opened and is selling some form of a ticket, which makes me wonder.....where are all those people gonna fit? That I found out very quickly. As the train pulled up, I was still pretty confident that our hard seat would be no worse than a old comfy car seat, or something of the like. But then I saw it.......the train actually had HARD BENCHES. Not even seats, but benches.....I knew those had our name all over them, because we held in our hand the lowest and cheapest ticket available, or at least so I thought. We boarded our car number 2 and I fought to hold back tears. Eli, Jaime and I all agreed that we needed a good nights rest because we had planned that it might be another two days or 40+ hours before we hit our destination: The capital of Laos, Vientiane. We entered the car and noticed that we were the only white people aboard and it was crowded. There was no aisleway, only people upon people sitting on small plastice red and blue stools. Ones made for little kids, that you might see in a backyard somewhere. We pushed our way to our seats, which were illegally occupied. And it dawned on me. Those little last minute tickets were Standing Room Only, or Sitting on Little Stools only tickets. We politely, with probably a terrified look on our face, showed our tickets to those occupying our seats and they politely moved to another vacant seat, which were scarce or to one of those little plastic chairs. So, in a sense, I guess we didn't have the worst seat in the whole car, but we were luck to get our wooden benches. The rumbled down the tracks, men smoked their cigerattes and babies cried, the aisles remained full, people got off and on, but the car remained the same: Full. People were everywhere, the train attendent was sleeping in a hammock next to the bathroom, which you could smell 10 feet away, people were in corners, lying under seats, in dark rooms.....trying to find anywhere to rest their head. I had a mini table infront of me so i placed my bag/pillow on it and dozed for a few hours, until i woke up and found a head on my shoulder. It was not Jaime or Eli, but rather the girl whose family was sitting next to us. Up until this point we hadn't spoken, but tiredness and desperate situations took over. We snuggled for a few hours. It was painful to sleep and it was painful to watch others to sleep because there was literally no where to lay your head.

the taxi

The train arrives, thank goddness,in Vinh at 5:30am. We know have to head to the Bus Station that is located behind the Central Market. In the dark, with just a half-page lonely planet we attempt to get a taxi in a city has been adapted for foreigners. With taxi drivers asking 5million a ride (it should be 5 thousand, but they confused the two) and with a look of confusion when the words central market don't translate, we are hesitate about our next steps. Eli finds a guy who for 10,000 will take us to what the central market, but after watching him pullover, flick on the overhead light, and examine the map for the third time, I begin to think that our journey might have hit a snag.

the bus

After about an hour, walking for 3km with our backpacks and almost getting on a few buses that in fact were not going to our destination, we find the central market and then the bus station. We locate the bus that goes almost to the Lao border. It is suppossed to cost 10,000 dong, but here we go again and they are trying to charge $10 per person (160,000 dong). It feels like we are back in the beginning of vietnam, but this time we know, or so we thought. The problem is, Eli is the only one who has money left (Surprising, but the girls all spent their money). We argue with this guy for about 5 minutes. Then another bus pulls up, so now eli and jaime are going back and forth trying to pit each against each other while i sit on the curbside, thinking maybe the vietnamese good sameritian will approach me and give me the fair rate....never happened. The first bus leaves, not with us, but instead i believe the driver leaes us with some choice words. So we go to the next guy, who has, up to this point has remained rather stoic, begins to open up and we begin to trust him. He takes to the actually ticket office, where the other guy didn't produce anything resembling a ticket, and in his best english tell us that we should pay more and he will take us the entire way to the border. An extra 32km than what we had planned. The lonely planet book (aka. the bible) told us that we would catch a bus to this border town and than take a motobike to the border. The motobikes cost 50,000 a piece. But because we by the extended ride bus ticket, we really don't have the 150,000 left to make it to our destination, but we are feeling confident, because we trust this new guy.

We arrive in the border town, and for some reason, the bus driver is indicating that this is the end of the road. WHAT? You said you would take us to the Lao border. We go back and forth, us in english, him in vietanmenglish. Its not working, and its not looking good. We aren't even half way through our journey and already we are running into problems. Now we are left 32km from the border. Eli has 120,000dong left.

the motobike
We try to bargain. The bikers aren't having any of it. 120,000, they say, will get two people to the border. Not good, we think. Picking my creating some tension down the road. So I produce $2 american dollars, that i was saving for when we get to Lao, where, again, we won't have any local currency. OK, they say. 120,000 dong plus $2 will do it. We all disperse to our allotted motobike and were off for our 45 minutes ride up the mountains, which again are breathtaking. We go higher than the clouds, twisting and turning as the mountain dictates, but as I'm taking this in, Jaime and I look at each other and both mouth ,"where's eli?" We reach the border town and both report that we haven't seen him since we left the border town. Luckily, we haven't paid them yet, and i grip my $2 hard, so as to not produce it till they produce an eli. About 15 mins later, we see a blue spot (eli's jacket) in the distance and he finally arrives, without the concern that he might have fell off the cliff like jaime and have. we pay the bike guys. WE HAVE made it to Lao! or so we thought!

the border patrol
We are the only ones at this border crossing. There is a lady with a cart and a few processed foods, a bunch of border guys, but no one else. We head into the empty building and start searching for someone to stamp us on. We look left and right, say "hello" a few times. Nothing. Finally, we round the corner and and see a few guys behind a glass. We know the procedure by now. smile. be polite. try to joke if possible. say thank you as much as possible.
They take our passports, so a bunch of meaninless things and then say, "$1 for stamp" What? can you say that again? "$1 for stamp." Officer, um, we don't have any money. And we really didn't.....we had barely enough to get our Laos visas and then to travel onward to the capital. So we were paying, and they weren't stamping. It was around 11am, so we thought we would just sit and wait it out. Eli dragged what look like a pew bench out from behind a stack of junk, making enough noise so everyone around knew what he was doing, I just sat at the window, giving my best puppy dog eyes and the occassional, "Please Mister!" Out of the 3 border officers, one produced a bottle of whiskey (maybe a previous bribe), the other headed to the back room to do whatever, and the one in front of me, resumed his solitare game on the computer. Obviously, they didn't mind if we waited either. Eli offered some Hong Kong Dollars, Jaime offered some Chinese RMB, giving even more than a dollar, but nothing seemed to work. After about 5 minutes or so, Eli decided to document the occassion with a picture, and just like that our passports were turned over and we were off to Lao. Eli must have photographed his bad side.

Onward to Lao, as we walked down the hill, we came upon a gold old game of bocci ball. At first we didn't realize, but as soon as we walked into the empy Immigration building, we realized that the participants of that evenings competition where infact our border patrol officers. We searched the whole building and it was completely empy, everyone was out either watching or throwing in the game. We actually waited for almost 10 minutes before there was a break and someone could come in and let us pay for our visas!! Our visa's were $30 as expected, they gave us back a good exchange rate, a man offered us a ride to the local town for a price quoted in lonely planet....We just couldn't believe it....no one was trying to take money from us and we were just a 200m from vietnam. Right then, I knew I would like lao.

pick-up trucks.......

So right now, about noon on day two we had spent a whole night on an ucomfortable train, an hour in lost in a taxi, 30 mins searching for the bus station, 1 hour on a bus made for 20, but carrying 35 people and a bedroom furniture set, and then it was 45 minutes on a motobike, and now we were just about halfway. The intended destination was Vientiane, Lao's capital. But the route was a bit shaky. We hoped into the first of many pick-up trucks, which took us about 36km, to the closest town. There we arrived and had missed the only bus to the capital by about 6 hours. Not ready to quit traveling, we worked out a deal to ride in the back of a pick-up truck again (a common way to travel in lao) which, we thought was heading all the way to the capital. Once inthe pick-up truck that has benches not made for western asses, we squeezed in among water bottles, food, beer lao, presents, and many other commodities and people. At times it was bearable or time all you could think about was a real seat. We made several stops on with this second truck, picking up supples, women and children, husbands and wifes, men with luggage. Anyone and anything that could pay for themselves was acceptable.

Around 5pm we arrived in the town of paccading, where our driver and his wife motioned to us another truck would be along to Vientiane and just to wait here. Eli went insearch of a coffee while jaime i decided to try and hitchhike. Later we read that is not so appropriate as the driver might think you are offering a service instead of requiring his. After about 45 minutes, eli had found out that there was a hotel in town, so we gave up, had some meal at a resturant with an english menu and check-in to a hotel. I got the shower first, which was warm and hot and had way to many bugs, but it didn't matter....i was clean

The next morning, we awoke early and reclaimed our position at the bus/pick-up truck stop. We had very little money and couldn't spare any for breakfast, so jaime had to swipe some wet-wipes for a piece of meat the size of her finger, but it did the trick. About 30 mins into waiting pick-up truck number 3 arrived with lots of room. I was feeling good as i stretched out and enjoyed the ride. But soon enough we passed a broken down bus and our driver welcomed all 25 aboard. I lost feeling in my legs at this point. After almost an hour we arrived in another town and bordered pick-up truck number 4......we didn't have enough money to pay them so we argreed they would take us to an ATM once we arrived in the capital.

Another 2 hours in that truck, we made it....hunger, a bit dirty, tired, but feeling good, because lao was proving to be what SE asia truly is.....or was.

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Photos

Onward to Lao
Apparantly, Mister border police man didn't like getting his picture taking, so after that last picture he slung them on the counter, and we heading on with our journey

The waiting is the hardest part.....
just like tom petty always said....the locals kept telling us, we think, the bus/truck/water buffalo would come, we just had to wait.

A tough bargain
Hungry, and with no money to spare, jaime used ingenuity to score her a piece of meat and some rice. Who ever said wet wipes were only for cleaning, apparantly there are a hot item on the black market

Pick-up truck number 3
When do you begin to lose count? 3?? 4?? 6??

Pick-up truck number 2
At this point, this mode of travel was exciting....that ended fast

The view from the window seat
in pickup number 2, i think

The view from the another window seat
This was about hour number 5, day 2, maybe

Our pick-up is your bus...
their bus broke down, so all 45 of them squeezed into the back of our once roomy truckbed......as I have learned, there is always room for more.

different truck, same view
i was so done with pick-up trucks at this point.

Before we saw the see our hard seats
Jaime and I (this is important) before we saw our beds for the evening. I believe those smiles left our faces

Please.....give us our passports!
Our friendly Vietnamese Border Police, smoking a cigeratte and playing on his computer while we wait.... Mister wanted a $1 for each stamp...We had no problem bribing, but at this point had NO money left.

Dinner? Breakfast? Lunch?
Who knows, it was all the same....Ritz cheesy crackers