to start things off, ruairi and i got 'done', by what the lonely planet refer to as 'the hanoi-vientiane bus scam'. unfortunately we were not aware of this scam until half way through the journey, when i picked up the scary planet and started reading about 'the scam' and thought hmm, this sounds familiar... were in the god damn middle of it! basically, we paid $25 each, to have an airconditioned mini bus, for the 16 hr trip. when we asked what the cheaper version was, he said 'nooo', you dont want that, its only slightly cheaper and its a public bus that's filled with livestock. so.we got bundled onto a regular, ricketty, 'fresh' aired, 60 seater, 1940's, tin can, heap of s*** bus, only to find out that most of our fellow passengers paid
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