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Published: February 22nd 2011
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The longer i am in vietnam the more twisted and unsure my perceptions become of this place..
A grim soviet esq feel lingering in the air and a constant battle of personal greed is writhe in the north..
it is saturday morning, our plan at this stage was to get to a hill tribe town called bac ha, 340km away by road in time to see the sunday markets which bring people from different minority tribes from near and far.. shouldnt be too hard id imagine.
since we we staying at a hotel we spoke to the woman at the front desk that we had mentioned our plans to when we arrived the night before, she spoke good english and said she would help us.. as we approach she immediately told us she had been ringing around and that all trains are sold out except for a crazy expensive vip ticket.. "okay.. so what are our other options?" ..she comes up with sleeper bus.. which she had been trying to peddle last night.. so how much is this bus? 15us dollars.. seems very pricey.. i decide to do a bit of research on the computer in the hotel loby,
we call a train company to be told their carage is sold out so we assume others will be similar.. but as we are worried the bus will fill up as well we feel rushed for time.. if that were the case we would never get there in time! after a while we decide to just pay the high price and see it as paying for convienience and the whole ordeal should be stress free..
having the day to explore we discover hanoi is a very different city.. this place has anything you could ever want and everything you dont need in about a 10block chunk known as the "old quarter" from silk to food to tupperware to pets to propaganda posters to balloons to tools and hardware this place literally has anything you could ever imagine.
after collecting our tickets we catch a taxi to the bus station, very far out of town in what seems like a dodgy area we are dropped at a 'vietbus' bus terminal.. this place looks dodgy!
we wait for our bus, accidently get on the wrong bus to be kicked back off.. the bus looked reasonable, bed like seats quite comfortable,
might be an okay bus ride yet!
our bus arrives, the doors open and the bus driver throws a large handful of rubish out onto the sidewalk.. eventually we get on to find we dont have bed seats, we have semi reclining chairs, and our backpacks under foot take up all available leg room..
more and more people cram onto the bus, it was soon more than clear we didnt get the bus ride we had paid for.. once the seats filled up, cushions which are removed from overhead compartments line the walkway to allow more and more people to sit and lay in the isle..
as there was now nowhere to walk the bus driver then collected tickets by clambering along the arms of the seats walking on and over those in his way..
as we set off the bus driver promptly turns on the tv playing a weird concoction of vietnamese movie and music clips purpose build to deter people from sleeping.. one clip consisting of about 10people standing on the beach screaming at each other..
apparently an acceptable time to allow for a bus to cover 300km in vietnam is 12hours.. an average of 25km
an hour.. how it takes so long ill never understand..
now this 12 hours on the "sleeper" bus in hindsight was very amusing.. a midnight dinner stop saw everyone woken and kicked off the bus in an aggressive manner by the driver, bus driver smoking constantly, tv turned on and off at random times, lights turned on and off at random times, a lady tried to sleep on jimmys legs, an old man DID sleep on her backpack under her feet, a small child pee'd into a plastic bag, people played music from their phones and sang along loudly, people played games on their phones with keypad buttons and music up loudly, a guy was nearly left behind at a pee stop when he came running out of the bush after the bus.. in the end there wasnt so much sleep that happened!
first impressions on arrival at loa cai, a weird soviet town comprising of mostly grey concrete bleak buildings coupled with heavy cloud threatening rain and unfriendly, non smiling northern local faces.. strang unwelcoming place..
after finding the local bus station and correct bus i go inside to buy tickets, after several attemps to ask
the ticket lady for tickets she gave me a stick to point at where i wanted to go and then somehow informed me to pay the driver..
we knew the tickets were between 35,000 and 5,0000 dong each, so when asked for money about half way into the trip i handed the ticket guy a 100,000dong note and said it was for both of us.. he then claimed the fare was 100,000 EACH.. clearly bullshit (again) so after debating for ages and him not letting up that 2011 price is now double we gave him another 20,000 and politely told him what we thought of him.. after sitting ignoring him for a while as he continued to demand more he gave up and moved on.. (we later had 50000 each confirmed by a local)
the mini bus driver was nothing short of a crazy man.. driving the bus as quickly as he could the 80km to bac ha, through small quiet villages and around the windey mountain roads in doing this he managed to drop a 2.5hour trip down to an hour! this was quite handy as the last bus had put us 3 hours behind schedual.. but
at the same time was quite scarey..
arriving at bac ha, the markets were quite impressive and we managed to finally get there 2hours before they finished.. hill tribe people and obvious outsiders trying to make a dollar on a niche market lined the streets.. it was soon after arrival that we realised we were unprepared for the weather of far north vietnam.. cold cold cold sums it up.. as the sun went down temps easily dropped below 0degC..
this is getting long and again im getting tired of writing so:
sugarcane which you strip the outside off with a knife, bite off a chunk of the middle, chew the juice then spit out the husk.. YUM!
walk along roads that wind up mountains overlooking rice terraces.. impessive
drop camera lense down hill into luckily dry rice terrace.. annoying
drop camera lense onto road.. (i was determined to break my lense that day).. VERY annoying
bland basic food.. not surprising
after terrible bus ride up, decide to catch sleeper train on the way back, much better option.. definately worth the extra money!
hindsight is definately a good way to see the humour in situations.. =p
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