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We are now in Laos, finally. It took a hellishly long time. We bought tickets for a overnight bus trip that was supposed to pick us up at our hotel at 6:30 PM, Friday the 3rd. The bus was supposed to be a regular tourist bus with A/C etc. So we're at our hotel at about 6:15 to wait for the bus, at about 7:15 we are shuffled a few blocks away to another hotel, and finally at about 7:45 we got on the bus. It's a pretty nice bus, good amounts of leg room and nice air conditioning. Should make for a relativly pleasant journey. About 45 minutes later we stop at a gas station, and are kicked off the bus to another bus. A piece of shit bus. This bus has about 8 rows of seats, then 8 feet of cargo space, then 2 more rows, where us tourists are relegated. The upside of this is we get to stretch our feet out over all the bags, but we still don't have any air conditioning, and none of the bus crew speaks any english. So finally, we start back on our journey.
About an hour and a half later there is a loud grinding sound and our bus pulls to the side of the road. It's about 10:00 PM. We're not very far out of Ha Noi, so how long could we possibly have to wait. The crew gets out and tries to fix the bus until about midnight, and then I suppose they gave up. We were stuck until daylight when they started working on it again. I guess it would have made too much sense for them to call another bus to come pick us up. Instead we got to sleep in the stuffy heat of the bus. At about 5:45 they got the bus working again and we were off. 2 hours later the bus breaks down again. Now we're stuck on the side of the road, 7km away from the city of Vinh. So regardless, we're near a city, they should be able to do something about our problem. 4 hours later, in the heat of the hot sun, we're still stuck. No one speaks any English, they don't tell us anything. Coral and I are getting kind of hungry about now, it's been ahwile since we last ate, about 20hrs. We have a bit of money, but not much since we're expecting to be in Laos soon where we can cash some travellers cheques in for Laos Kip. We're running pretty short on Dong, but we had enough to get some water and a bag of biscuits. Well actually Coral had enough money, I didn't have any, I guess I owe her now. So we have a small 'meal' and finally, a few hours later we start moving again. Unfortunately there is no chance we can make it to the border before it closes, so we have to make a stop. The logical choice would be Vinh, it's a small town, it's got a bank with an ATM. But instead we stop off at the hell hole of Cau Lao. It's a resort town for vacationing Vietnamese. Well it's actually just a long street running parallel to the beach with lots of expensive hotels. This place has no ATM and we're really running low on cash. We're informed the bus will be leaving at 3AM, we have about 11 hours to waste. We stopped and had a coke, spent a bit of time on the beach, and then tried to go to a restaurant. It was a small hole in the wall establishment, but nonetheless they tried to rip us off quite a bit. So we didn't eat that night and finally got back on the bus around 11PM a tried to sleep, then around 2AM we started driving again. I woke up at 5:00AM and we were parked at another gas station. About an hour later we started driving again and soon made it to the border. I think we made it through the border at around 8:00 AM. Coral had 1 US Dollar and used it to buy the both of us some water. We now had 6000kip until we exchanged money. A little bit later the bus stopped again for food, which we couldn't afford. I'm not sure why, but we were stopped for just under 2 hours....to eat. Nobody needs that long to eat. Every other bus we've been on gives us 40min to an hour to eat. But not these bastards, they like to take there time. Anyway, we finally make it to Vientiane at around 4PM. But it's Sunday, and the one bank we knew of that was open on Sunday closed at 3:00. Not to mention the fact that we were dropped off in the middle of nowhere. We finally found a tuk tuk driver who would take us to a Guest House for the pitiful 6000 kip we had. Judging by the length of the trip I'd be amazed if he hadn't spent more on gas then what we paid him.
So we're at a Guest House, we get showers, and we're starving. The receptionist tells us there should be a money exchange if we just go straight down the street. We went straight, left, right, in circles, we didn't find any, except a bunch of banks all over the place. So we return to the guest house to sleep until the next day. Then the receptionist tells us of a guest house that will exchange travellers cheques. So we go looking for it, and finally find it. We got some money, ate some food, and went to bed happy. It had been about 52 hours since our last meal, and 32 hours since we last had anything to eat. Through this excursion, and the rest of our time in the North of Vietnam, I've come to the conclusion that they treat tourists like shit. Everywhere south of Ha Noi the people were hospitable and friendly, but once we got to Ha Noi it went downhill dramatically. But now we're in Laos, we've got money, and we've eaten. So can't complain. Sorry if this whole post seemed like a rant, but it was an absolutely shitty 2 days.
That's it for now.
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anonymous
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Now that's impressive
Now that it's over, you're safe, fed and have a room, it makes for a great story. I think I would have been absolutely crazy having to go that long without food. Do you remember what the meal you finally had was? - Kakashi