The bus from hell

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Ok to start off i thought i'd tell you all about my Australia Day which I forgot to add to my last entry.

Australia Day Eve we ate with our homestay hosts in Sapa, the best food of the trip till that point. We had been told it was customary to drink the local rice-wine with our hosts and it was not long before we were shotting it down toast after toast... 3 bottles later and our host was just getting started, to our better judgement we left the table to play cards in our merry state. Most of Australia day was spent hiking back to Sapa and we had intended to break out our wife beaters in the main street for an Aussie celebration but shamefully chickened out because of the 7 degree temperature outside. I hope everyone enjoyed the day as much as I did!

I better say from the get go that the 24 hour bus trip from hanoi to Vientiane wasn't as bad as perhaps the title of this entry suggests... but it was pretty close. It was however deffinitely an experience worth having and one that I can thoroughly recommend to anyone considering a similar length of trip.

We organised our bus to Laos through our hostel and were not quite sure what to expect! From our hostel we were picked up by a mini-van which was too full to fit the three of us in, so Brendan had the hairball experience of riding a motorbike through hanoi! At the main bus terminal a number of luxurious sleeper buses were parked and slowly we began to raise our expectations only to have them crushed when we found the bus we were actually taking (What did we expect for an international bus that cost just $22us?!).

The bus was without a toilet and fully laiden with sacks of produce stacked onto its roof. Inside was also crammed with boxes and luggage. It was dank and the locals didn't want to move over to allow us to sit down. After clearing space at the back of the bus we settled into a bus ride that what was obviously going to be longer than we wished. It became apparent shortly after we left that this was not just a passenger bus but also acted as a local logistics service to Laos. We kept stopping and more and more stuff was brought into and ontop of the bus (i don't know where it all went!) this kept happening to the point where huge sacks (approx. 1m*30cm*50cm) were placed in the isles compressing us into our seats. Dan found this particularly problematic as he was too tall to fit both knees behind the seat infront! To say that we were like sardines would be an understatement! The produce and boxes were crammed in like sardines and we were left to fill whatever space was left!

We had barely left Hanoi and we were already wondering whether we would survive to Vientiane! To make matters worse some of the locals decided that smoking in the now stuffy and claustrophobic was a good idea. Fortunately not many people were smokers and the outcry from all the travellers on the bus every time this happened stopped others from starting. The lack of a toilet was not an issue as we stopped frequently... although there are few times i can recall using worse facilities! We got into a routine of filling on and off the bus crawling over boxes everytime we came to a rest-stop.

The border crossing was relatively hassel free although we picked up a few more passengers who, because there were no free seats had to sit on plastic chairs in the isle or ontop of boxes! Aside from the aforementioned the rest of the trip was relatively hassel free and by the end we realised it may have even been slightly enjoyable. We met some great people, two of which we are still travelling with 4 days later.

Our first full day in Vientiane was deffinitly a welcome one. Laos really is laid back, and this was a welcome change to the crazy walk across the road and hope the traffic stop bussle of Vietnam. It just feels like this capital city is an oversized town. There are way less people around the cars don't beep at each other endlessly and the people just seem to be more content. As each day goes by I feel more and more relaxed even though we have moved about more here than vietnam!

We decided to hire motor bikes and tour the city which just isn't feasable in Hanoi due to the traffic and crazy drivers. We had a great time negotiating right hand drive roads driving down the wrong side on a number of occasions! After this we drove 1hr outside the city down dirt roads to Budda park. While not as big or grand as i had imagined contained an amazing fort-like structure and many statues ranging from the very small to massive 20 odd meter long reclineing buddas (see my facebook photos).

That night we celebrated Dan the man's 19th birthday. Eating our best meal so far (bbq fish) and then topping that of with a 3 litre tower of beer each.

Today we travelled to Vang Vieng were we plan to stay for the rest of our Laos trip. We plan to go pub tubing, rafting and caving so check back for my next update,
Rob

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