Myth busting "The bus from Hell"

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This blog will be mostly dedicated to reliving our journey from Vientiane, Laos to Hanoi, Vietnam (where we are now). Prior to booking the horrid 24 hour bus (or so we thought!) we read TONS and TONS of different forums and other people's accounts of their experience; most weren't very good. Budget was a slight issue and so a flight was too pricey for us. We also considered breaking the trip up but time was of the essense as well. We decided that it would be a more economical and timely option to take the sleeper bus.

We feel it is our duty as travellers to provide an accurate account of the northern route bus ride that has been dubbed "The bus from Hell".

Firstly, we are not picky travellers nor do we need much in terms of comfort...having said that this was by far the longest journey in our travels so far, but definitely not the most uncomfortable.

We shopped around in Vientiane LOTS for this journey, and the general consensus was that if you choose a travel agency that looks ok and not just a table and chair and zero English speaking staff...you will most likely be put on the exact same bus as everyone else. The prices were about the same at $30 including the transfer from your GH to the bus station. We booked ours at Sounait Travel (we think that's the spelling..) on one of the smaller streets surrounding the main Setthathirath Road. They advertised the trip as taking 22 hours from 6PM-4PM the next day. This was the only thing that wasn't accurate. In actuality it took 25 hours. We left at 6:30PM and arrived 7:15PM next day.

Now, there are older buses and newer buses and they rotate days. So make sure to look at lots of pics and ask lots of questions. We had several agencies call "whoever" to confirm type of seats, bathroom on board etc. We took the orange coloured bus on a Saturday. They run Tues, Thurs and Sat and the older ones run the rest of the days. This was the modern bus with almost fully reclining single seats. There are 3 rows of bunk beds in the bus. The floor is padded with a mattress and the seats were very comfortable.

TIP:

Bring a sweater and long pants (I even had a scrarf and a beenie on) as the AC is absolutely CRANKED the whole way!

We read that the bus staff get very annoyed at foreigners as most of the people on the bus are locals. Foreigners get yelled at, ushered around like cattle at the border etc..

We had none of this! The driver was super friendly and so were the other guys working on the bus. Sure there was a language barrier so they just sort of pointed where we needed to go etc. We were totally ok with that.

The bus had a dinner stop at 9pm, we didn't get off though. We arrived at the border at about 2AM and the driver got in the queue behind some trucks and shut off the engine. He got off to go sleep somewhere until 6am. At this point the bus did get a bit hot and stuffy so the long sleeve, beenie hat and scarf needed to come off! Still, no big deal..we just readjusted and continued to sleep. It wasn't a sound sleep but it did the trick. At 6am the lights got turned on and one of the staff was collecting everyone's passports. Again we were prepared as we read lots on this. They apparently shuffle all the farangs off the bus and make them walk about a kilometer to the border control. Where you wait in a huge line and no English etc etc... We almost got away with giving our passports to the bus worker but he then asked another guy and he said for us to get off. I don't think they do this to be mean to tourists and make them walk in the rain or whatever. It's more because they don't really know how much we'll need to pay (it varies as most borders have the potential to be corrupt..again, we knew all this).

So us and the other farang couple got off the bus and were told to wait until 7am. I asked "border open at 6, why 7am??"...no answer. Oh well, so we waited. We went inside the booth and got in line. The bus guys bring their bags filled with locals' passports to be stamped so make sure you try to get yours on their desk before the bags get there. We managed to, and to our surprise ours were stamped first! We paid 10000Kip to exit Laos. Then the bus was getting through the gate and we were told to walk to the next checkpoint which was about a kilometer. So we had to walk 7mins...it was a nice morning and mountains all around. We got to another immigration checkpoint and paid another 1$ each and got our passports stamped for our arrival into Vietnam. Then our bus came and had to be checked so we took our bags and walked 10metres to the last checkpoint. Just an official who looked at your passport one last time. The whole ordeal did take about 2 hours from start to finish and we were once again off at 9am. Easy breezy. Noone was rude, noone yelled..sure it wasn't very organised but we got through and felt like we didn't really get ripped off either with their "weekend fees" or "before 3pm fees" that we'd read about.

The drive from the border was AMAZING...mountains all around and a beautiful sunny day. We stopped again at noon to eat. We were prepped with lots of snacks and water so we didn't get off again. The drive through the cities was the most tedious. We drove at an ambitious pace of about 25km's an hour and our driver was very honk friendly. We arrived in Hanoi at 7:15pm. Took a taxi to the Old Quarter where we booked our hotel and that was it for our journey! All in all, we would recommend this to anyone considering a more budget friendly route from Laos into Vietnam. We were expecting the absolute worst but the drive was nice and smooth, staff was ok and border control was a breeze (considering).

So today we are in Hanoi after arriving 2 nights ago, and just getting our bearings together. The hospitality service level is impeccable here. As we got to the hotel we were greeted with smiling and friendly staff. They took our bags, offered us tea and coffee and asked all sorts of questions about how our jouney here had been. Then they dropped the bomb.. They had some sort of booking problems, and they were going to give us a different room....uh oh! Before we could react though, they assured us that we would get a much nicer room just at a different hotel 5 mins away. They paid for our taxi there, and the new hotel (Golden Legend Hotel) is AMAZING! We got a 40$ a night room for the same price we booked the other one ($17), with a superb breakfast. Our room has a king bed, with AC, satalite TV, coffee, tea maker, fridge and even our own desktop computer with wifi! Oh and for the first time in S.E. Asia...WE HAVE A BATHTUB! such small things you take for granted, but it feels nice to shower in a proper tub with a curtain and all!

We will be going to explore the city a bit today + tomorrow. We will also be heading north to Sapa in the next 2 days to do some amazing trekking and see some cool rice paddies.

Love,

D & A

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