The Epic Journey

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We arrived into Vientiane early in the morning at 5.30am and sat at the fountain waiting for things to open. We watched people going about their exercises and mosquito killing routines before 7am eventually arrived and we could get breakfast in our favourite cafe, JoMa. I was feeling pretty rough having barely slept on the bus down and it was a struggle to stay awake in the air conditioned cafe, a struggle that I lost for a little while! We then headed out around town to book our ticket to hanoi. The first shop warned us away from the bus journey and, in our sleepy state, we nearly waivered and got a flight until we saw how much they would cost, that woke us up quickly! So, back to the shop and we bought our tickets for 24hrs of travel on a bus. The ticket shop owner phoned his friend at a guesthouse who let us leave our bags there for the day and we spent the rest of the time wandering round buying our last few Laos souvenirs and had a big lunch to stave off the hunger for as long as possible.
Just before 5 we were picked up by a tuk-tuk and proceeded around town to collect 4 other passengers who had decided to take on the journey as well. In good humour we tukked up the road until the engine started to sound a little unhealthy and wouldn't pull anymore. We had heard horror stories on the internet of overfull buses, etc and that seats were assigned on arrival so we were beginning to worry that we were in for 24hrs on a plastic stool in the aisle. Eventually the driver conceeded that his motor was not going to get us there and flagged down a passing jumbo to complete the journey, but not before attempting to get us to go on the back platform of an already overfull tuk tuk with our back packs on, we refused. We got there and found the buses to be fairly empty and got seats without any trouble. Phew!
The bus set off at 7pm and the evening passed fairly quickly with talking to the others on board and watching the last two episodes of Life on Mars. We then tried to get some sleep and managed fairly well until 2am when the bus pulled up at the border (it didn't open until 7) and turned off the engine (and therefore also the A/C). It got a bit warm and stuffy but we managed to drift in and out of sleep for the remaining hours that we were stationary. We walked up to the border and got the Laos officials to stamp our passports without any problems. The main obstacle was getting to the window to hand them over but we've got pretty sharpened elbows so coped! We realised that the bus had pulled through the border post and were a little concerned that we had been left behind but we found it just outside. We then walked up to the Vietnamese border where we paid 2000VND for our entry form, filled it in, handed over our passport and had to pay $1 to get it back, a special 'tax' that goes straight into the guards pocket. The Americans that we were with tried to stand their ground but the officials were giving nothing. They wanted the money and our passports are worth more than one dollar to us so we just paid up! All safely back on the bus we continued on our way down the mountainous roads into Vietnam. There was very little english on the signs so we generally had no idea where we were but the scenery was pretty amazing. My favourite sight was the live cow strapped to the back of a motorbike (unfortunately i didn't get the camera out quick enough to capture that one). We carried on driving and arrived at the bus station in Hanoi at about 5pm, 24hrs after being picked up in the tuk-tuk.

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