The bus from hell (vientiane to hanoi)

This was the cheapest way to get from Vientiane in Laos to Hanoi in Vietnam. Its a pretty long distance and took 24 hours. thats 24 hours... on a bus..... When i got my pickup to go to the bus i bumped into a familiar face: jen whom i had met on the slow boat into laos and had met in each place i had been since. She however had splashed the cash on the sleeper bus which was a good $20 more expensive than my A/C bus. Having forked out so much for the visa itself i was feeling the pinch so opted for the cheap option. I found my air-conditioned coach dropped my stuff on a seat and proceeded to wait another hour for the thing to leave. I turned out not to be the only cheapskate either as 4 other foreigners joined me on this bus. 7pm finally rolls around and we are off.... for ten whole minutes. Apparently buses need fuel, who'd have thought? This kind of set the tone for the next few hours as it consistently broke down. I had a Vietnamese guy crammed onto the seat next to me who didnt understand the concept of sitting. He had arms and legs all over the place and seemed to think the seat was a hammock or something. I just listened to music and tried to read my book. As well as the various breakdowns we also had some toilet stops and a food stop. A little bit later i took a valium as i was exhausted and unable to sleep. This knocked me out for a while and i remember waking up when we took off the following morning. We must have stopped somewhere for a few hours.

We arrived at the border at around 7am i think and this is where the fun and games really started. The bus just stopped in a queue of other vehicles. We were up on a mountain shrouded in fog and i was still groggy from my valium. Everybody gets off the bus and us foreigners just look bemusedly at them. Since nobody on the bus spoke english, nobody told us to get off or do anything. About a half hour later as im getting off to get some fresh air the driver just says 'Visa?' and points up the road. Not really knowing what this means i take a walk and discover that i have to sign out of Laos. I worked this out from the large crowd of people in a small room handing passports over a counter. I stood back to watch how the system worked and then copied what everyone else was doing. It being a saturday i was subjected to the dollar fine which is a big scam. I met Jen here as well a bit groggy as she had been woken up by her bus driver to get the visa done. She had taken valium and was the last person on the bus so she had to try and figure it all out while doped up. She was panicking as she was afraid her bus would go without her too but we got sorted. After finishing this i walk outside and get hailed by a guy in uniform who tells me to walk up the road in the fog. This i do quite warily as i dont know where my bus is and all of my stuff is on it. I stayed with the guys off my bus as i figured there was strength in numbers, we would all be in it together if things began to go sour. A few minutes walk in the fog later we arrive at another border post. All we had done at the last one was sign out of Laos, now we had to sign into Vietnam. The whole process started again, watching what everyone else did to work out what we needed to do. Another fine for it being a saturday (told you it was a scam). Then we realised we had to grab our stuff off the bus to put it through customs ourselves. SO i had to find the bus, cart my gear to the office again and put it through an x-ray. Satisfied i wasnt running guns into Vietnam they gave me the stamp and sent me on my way. This wasnt quite the end of it though as i had to get my new stamp checked. I also discovered the source of a noise that had been bugging me. It was a truckload of dogs, the same as you would see in ireland for sheep or cattle. They really do eat dog in Vietnam.

Off we go on our bus again and i would like to say the rest of the journey was uneventful but sadly i cant. Before i get into that though it has to be said that drivers in Vietnam make thai drivers look like wimps. I had thought driving in thailand was nuts but this took the biscuit. The only rules i could work out were that there were no rules. At times our bus would overtake a truck overtaking a motorbike overtaking a bicycle all in the face of heavy oncoming traffic....crazy. The horn is a valuable tool in this country as you use it every few minutes to inform whatever is infront of you or coming towards you to move out of your way. The big event of the day came when we stopped in a town and the guys starting taking bags off the bus. I only paid attention when i realised my bag was one of the ones going off. I chased after the guy and tried to get it back but they wanted to put all the foreigners into a minibus (and no doubt charge us for this pleasure) but we kicked up a fuss and they let us back on the main bus. I had heard of this scam and was determined not to get caught out. Finally we approach Hanoi and stop just before the bus station. Here a guy gets on and comes down to us at the back to inform us of his wonderful hostel. The only reason i gave this the time of day is that 2 of the guys had been recommended the one he was on about. So we followed him and got ourselves a bed for the night. It was good to be off the bus....