Well, where to begin.... Instead of booking the 26+ hour bus journey from Hanoi in Vietnam to Vientiane the capital of Laos, we opted to make our own random journey. This involved taking yet another night train to Da Hong (again we booked it rather last minute and so only managed to get a hard sleeper carriage again, which meant sharing with 4 others... who were lovely locals who tried to feed us constantly with the weirdest looking fruit and sweets!). So 13 hours later we eventually arrived in Da Hong and caught a minibus and then a motorbike taxi to the Lao Bao boarder, however we thought we might not make it to Laos as the minibus we were in was smuggling cigarettes! Right in front of our eyes the driver pulled over and his
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