Advertisement
Published: March 12th 2013
Edit Blog Post
Our last morning on Don Det and the end of our stay on the beautiful 4000 islands. We arrived at the beach to catch our boat back to the main land and were very confusingly sheparded onto the boats and my bag was left precariously near the side of the boat, to say I was panicking would have been an understatement. But we arrived to the shore in one piece and made it to our bus. After a strange sort of roll call of our destinations we were allowed to board, and were then literally caged in by everyone elses baggage, as the bags were piled in the aisles as the hold was full. Health and safety nightmare! When we reached pakse we had to clamber over everyone elses bags and try not to kick anyone on our way past, was a challenge. We only had to wait about 20 minutes and then we were aboard the next bus of the journey, heading to Tha Khek. We arrived after what felt like an age and managed to find a cheap and relatively okay room for the night, only £1.30 each. It was not the quietest of nights, trucks and buses beeping,
dogs barking and strange bangings. Not the best. The next day was spent trying to figure out how to get to the vietnam border town, Lak Sao. After a confusing conversation at the bus station, we decided to stick to the lonely planet's advice and get 2 separate buses. So for the rest of the day we explored Tha Khek's main town, not the prettiest of places, but we managed to find nice food and an internet cafe to catch up on some of our blog. We watched the sunset over the river too, whilst enjoying a beer lao, perhaps the highlight of the day, and then headed back to the guesthouse. We were up bright and early this morning (Jessie B's 18th birthday) and were at the bus station for 7, we hopped on to a local bus heading to vientiane, and after 3 hours, we managed to fight out way past the ladies selling mangoes to reach our
half way destination, Viang Kham. We were then ushered towards a songthaeo (a sort of tuk tuk/mini bus), all the men just kept saying lak sao, lak sao, so we hoped this was the right one for us. At first it was pretty empty, but as time went on more and more people piled in, until there was 20 people, all crammed in, sitting on benches down the middle of the aisle. People had chickens in bags at our feets and this one lady was squashing kimmy so bad and kept pulling her hair. We were in for a long couple of hours! We stopped at a place called Nahin, and the weirdness of the journey took a definite turn towards crazy town. A mysterious women, who later in the journey took a shine to me, and kept stroking my hands and face, put a strange shaped bag onto the bus, which the man next to me decided to open and then show me what was inside....I looked in and saw a porcupine, definitely something i was not expecting! The fun of this crazy journey was still not over, when i glanced over to see a small girl being sick into her fathers hands, and kyle racing to find her a bag, kyle to the rescue! Was not the nicest of sights by any means. We finally reached Lak sao and were sooooo glad to be off that songthaeo. There were no buses to Vinh (in vietnam) til the morning so we went off in search for a place to stay for the night. Lak sao looked somewhat like mars, all red soil and bare land, and in fact the local people made us feel somewhat like martains ourselves. There was alot of staring and pointing, we kinda got the impression not too many foreigners crossed the border this way... Our evening was spent trying to recover from a surreal couple of days and chilling out. Today was the day, we were finally going to reach the vietnam border and hopefully Vinh. After a quick breakfast of fried rice we headed to the bus station and were told there wasnt a bus for 2 hours so settled ourselves in. We got quite abit of attention still, with one man even coming over to shake my hand. However, after about half an hour a guy beckoned us over and told us that there was a bus leaving for vinh earlier. So we wandered over to this tiny little bus, which already seemed full, our bags were thrown onto the roof and we crammed ourselves onto the bus. We reached the border and no one really told us where to go so we kinda had to figure it out for ourselves, but we managed to get stamped out and then after another little bus journey to cover the 1km of no mans land, we were stamped into vietnam, FINALLY! Although our journey still wasn't over, we were back on the tiny little bus for another few hours until we got to vinh, when people literally ran at us to try to get us to buy a bus ticket from them. We realised we had no vietnam dong, so after a quick ride on a mototaxi, we were armed with cash and ready to buy a bus ticket. Luckily there was a sleeper bus leaving that evening, yay😊 so we grabbed some food, the lady there took a real liking to kyle, she even at points fed him his noodle soup and gave him a cheeky kiss on the cheek as we left. We boarded the bus and tried to settle down for a few hours kip before reaching Hanoi.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.058s; Tpl: 0.009s; cc: 11; qc: 43; dbt: 0.0329s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Hannah
non-member comment
O M G
Hi you guys, oh my goodness. That is one crazy journey. And I just can\\\'t believe there was a porcupine! Haha. I remember crossing borders in this way and thn realising you have no local money and having to figure it out...proper travellers you are now! Miss u guys being here in taiwan xxx