Well, we finally made it to Laos after the bus ride from hell! I'm sure there were more than a few moments when we both wondered whether we were going to make it or not.
We had spent a while trying to decide whether to just cough up the cash to fly to Vientiane from Hanoi (the cheapest flight that we could find was US$130) or take the bus (which was going to cost around US$15 - $20). In the end, we decided that we couldn't justify the cost of the flight, especially considering that it was only an hour long flight. That left us lookng forward to the prospect of a 20 hour bus ride.
There are so many travel agencies in Hanoi and half of them are really dodgy. There are only a few original travel agencies and then tonnes of copycats which offer the same types of things at less cost (and quality). They will just tell you absolutely anything to get a sale. We had the worst time trying to book our tour to Halong Bay and it was the same just trying to get a bus ticket to Vientiane.
We could never get a straight answer out of any of the travel agencies as to how many bus companies travelled the route, what the difference in the prices / standard of bus was, how long it would take etc. Half the agencies told us that there was only one bus company driving that route, the other half told us there were tonnes of different ones. All the agencies told us that the company they used was a "tourist bus" with aircon etc, not a dodgy local bus.
In the end, we ended up booking the cheapest ticket we could find which was about US$12. The lady assured us that the ticket was for the tourist bus which was a big bus with comfy reclining seats and aircon. (You probably think we were pretty naive and stupid buying her story. But hey, later we found out that one of the other tourists on the horror bus paid US$40 for her ticket! At least we weren't ripped off as well as lied to). The agency told us that the bus would pick us up at our hotel at 5.00pm. I knew that something was probably amiss when it hit 5.30pm and they still hadn't arrived to pick us up. When we checked our receipt, we noticed that neither the name of the company that sold us the ticket, or any of their contact details were on there. Luckily Paul remembered where their office was. When it hit 6.00pm, our hotel suggested that we go and ask them what was going on. So Paul dashed off to the office while I waited at the hotel.
About 10 minutes later, Paul was back with a couple of motos in tow. They had forgotten to pick us up! We had to jump on the motos (with our massive back packs I might add) and go to where the bus was waiting for us. We hooned through the streets of Hanoi at crazy speeds on the back of the motos trying to catch up with the bus. We must have been on the back of the motos for at least 20 minutes - it was pretty crazy. We finally turned into a dirt road in the middle of an industrial area and the moto drivers dumped us off on the side of the road. There was no bus there.
This other guy turned up who spoke a bit of English and he tried to tell us that we had to pay for the motos! I couldn't believe they were trying to rip us off like that when they were supposed to pick us up at the hotel over one hour ago! Needless to say, we refused. The guy started to yell at us but we just refused to pay so he ended up giving up. After a few minutes, the dodgiest looking bus ever pulled up! It was really old and it had a few Vietnamese people already onboard. A couple of guys jumped out and climbed onto the roof of the bus. They motioned for us to hand up our backpacks so they could put them on the roof with some other cargo that was already there.
Now bear in mind that we had been assured that this was a tourist bus. This was like no tourist bus we had ever seen! If the lady had told us this was a local bus we would probably have expected it to be dodgy - but we weren't warned. We didn't want our backpacks going on top of the bus. What if they fell off or it rained? We refused to put them on the roof and motioned towards the compartment underneath the bus, asking if we could put them in there. The guy who spoke English told us we couldn't put them in there because it was full. He opened the compartment to show that it was full of square white packages. Hmmmm, this was getting worse and worse.
In that case then, we said, we want to take the bags onto the bus with us. At this point it looked like there was plenty of room. The guy who spoke English refused again. He started yelling at us to put our bags up on the roof. Right about this point, about 5 other tourists rocked up. They weren't too keen on putting their backpacks onto the roof either but eventually a couple of the tourists did. After that, we all capitulated and all the bags ended up on the roof.
After the bags were up on the roof, we went to get on the bus. The inside was so dirty and cramped. The seats were all made out of plastic and they were filthy, as were the crazy curtains on the windows. (At one point during the bus ride, one guy must have been carsick because he threw up into a plastic bag, then wiped his mouth on the curtain. Eeeeeeeew!!! After that, I didn't touch the curtains for the rest of the ride). We started to walk down aisle of the bus. About 2 metres down the aisle, we saw that there were more of the square white packages all over the floor of the bus and under the seats. They were everywhere - packed in tight all over the floor of the aisle, up under the seats - even stacked up where you were supposed to rest your feet when you sat down. We had to climb over the packages to get down the back of the bus. Apparently this is where foreigners have to sit because they were yelling at us to get down the back.
About halfway down the bus, one set of seats had been taken out on either side. They were using this area for storing more luggage and packages. The cargo was stacked at least waist height on both sides. We chose seats down the back and sat with our knees practically up to our chest with our feet resting on the white packages. Because there was hardly any room between the seats and because of all the cargo, we each took one set of two seats for ourselves.
Eventually the bus took off. At this point, some of the tourists moved down to the front of the bus, where there was less cargo. There were still some of us up the back, and two tourists were right on the back seat. The aircon in the bus had been on while we were getting on, but soon after we started driving, it was turned off. We had to open the windows to get some air.
After a while, we realised that we weren't going to be the last people to get on the bus. The bus kept stopping to get more cargo and more people. At one point, they loaded these huge green rectangular packages onto the bus, bigger than a bale of hay (but not so wide). These they rolled up the aisle and stacked between the seats. This meant that we couldn't see the person on the other side of the aisle and we had to climb almost up to the roof to get out of the bus.
They also loaded a tonne of cargo into the very back seat. The two tourists who were sitting there were surrounded on all sides by cargo and luggage up to the roof and even under their feet. A couple of times they tried to argue with the people putting the luggage on them but they just got yelled at.
One of the tourists, the only other girl on the bus at this point, decided to move to sit in the seats where all the cargo was stacked in the middle of the bus. This turned out to be a bad move as they just kept dumping more cargo on her. Sometimes she barely even had time to snatch her legs out of the way before they threw stuff on her! She tried to argue a couple of times but they just threw more stuff. At one point, when we stopped to pick up some more cargo, she tried to ask the driver whether she could get her backpack down off the roof.
I guess she figured that if everyone else's luggage was going to go inside the bus (and on top of her), then so could hers. The driver refused to look at her and she told us later that one of the other guys on the bus had slapped her on the butt and told her to get moving back into the bus. All we heard was her yelling "Don't f****** touch me!".
Eventually so many people got on the bus that we had to relinquish our space and Paul came to sit with me. We moved out some of the white packages from under our feet but we still had hardly any room. If you tried to put your seat back, the people behind you would complain and push on it because they were also sitting there with their legs up to their chest with hardly any room. The other female tourist cut into one of the white packages with her little pocket knife - we could see it was some kind of small metal parts. At least it wasn't drugs! The bus ended up so full that there was barely room for anyone to move.
We then spent a very long, very cramped and very hot night driving to the border with Laos. I'm sure all the tourists wondered whether the bus was going to stop in the middle of nowhere and demand crazy amounts of money to get us to our destination. I was so fed up at this point that I figured I would rather be on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere than on a bus with people who practically assaulted you. Luckily, the more people that got on the bus, the less likely this was to happen. With a fully loaded bus, we were pretty safe in this respect.
We eventually reached the border around 5.00am. We were all exhausted as we had been sitting upright all night and it was very hard to sleep. I was near the window and because it was so hot we had it open all night. It was very hard to sleep with the wind buffeting me all night long and howling in my ears. Just as well it didn't rain.
After a few hours waiting at the border post, it finally opened at around 7.00am. We had to pay a US$1 "stamping fee" to have the Vietnamese officials give us an exit stamp. I was actually surprised the "stamping fee" wasn't more, especially when I saw that it took three officials to stamp the passport (one to scan the passport, one to stamp it and one to check the stamp). It took at least 15 minutes to get the stamp. Then we had to walk a couple of hundred metres down the road to the Laos border post to get our visas. This took about 45 minutes and we had to pay another US$1 "stamping fee" as well as US$30 for the visa.
This was another crazy rigmarole. First, we had to go to one window to fill out the application form, submit our passport and get a receipt. Then we had to go to another window to pay the fee and have the receipt signed. Then we had to go back to the first window with the receipt to collect our passport and another piece of paper. Then we had to take the passport and a piece of paper to a third window and submit it there. Then we had to go to a fourth window and wait to collect the passport! It was so woefully inefficient - we were all worried in case it took too long and the bus took off and left us behind! At this point we wouldn't put anything past them!
However, eventually we all got our visas and it turned out that the bus was still undergoing a customs inspection back at the Vietnamese border post. We waited around on the side of the road for the bus to come pick us up. The border post was very pretty - it was in the mountains next to a clear stream and it wasn't too hot at this point.
The bus finally arrived and that was the last of the excitement for the day. We eventually made it to Vientiane at around 5.00pm the next day - almost 24 hours after we were supposed to start the bus ride. We were sooooo exhausted we went straight to the hostel we had picked and checked in, even though I hadn't eaten since lunchtime the day before and all Paul had had to eat was a few biscuits (we did stop a few times at little shacks in the country but we were too scared to eat anything there). We jumped straight in the shower - our clothes were caked in dirt (mind especially) from sitting near the open window with all the dust from the roads coming in. My hair was filthy and when I washed it the water ran black. It was soooo gross.
Rural Laos was very pretty though. In Vietnam it seemed that no matter where we went there were people everywhere. Laos was a lot prettier as there were fewer people and the scenery on the drive from the border to Vientiane was very nice. Once we had had a shower, we headed down to the riverfront to get some food. There are a bunch of food stalls that overlook the Mekong and sell freshly grilled seafood and meat. We ordered so much food we could barely eat it all. We were so starving from having practically no food on the bus.
As a few days have passed now since we arrived, I have started to forget how horrible the bus was. The thing is, it wasn't actually that bad IF you had known what it was going to be like and could adjust your expectations. The reason it was so horrible was because we were expecting something completely different and weren't prepared for the reality. However, the whole thing was made a lot worse by the attitude of the driver and other people running the bus (it always seems to take between 3 - 5 people to run a bus). They were quite rude and aggressive towards the tourists and if I had have been travelling alone I would have felt very intimidated.
So far, we both like Vientiane very much. I was so excited when we first arrived and I went to Talat Sao (the main market in Vientiane). All around me were the wall hangings that I had admired while I was in Hanoi! They weren't Vietnamese after all - they were imported from Laos. The silk and cotton weaving that they do here is unbelievable - it is so beautiful. Paul gets so bored with me always going on about it but I find it so interesting. Today I went out to a training centre where women are trained to weave traditional Laos textiles. You can see how they do the weaving and create the dyes from natural products like flowers etc. I even got to dye my own scarf.
From Vientiane we will be heading to Vang Vieng which is apparently the action capital of Laos, and after that to Luang Prabang.
We had spent a while trying to decide whether to just cough up the cash to fly to Vientiane from Hanoi (the cheapest flight that we could find was US$130) or take the bus (which was going to cost around US$15 - $20). In the end, we decided that we couldn't justify the cost of the flight, especially considering that it was only an hour long flight. That left us lookng forward to the prospect of a 20 hour bus ride.
There are so many travel agencies in Hanoi and half of them are really dodgy. There are only a few original travel agencies and then tonnes of copycats which offer the same types of things at less cost (and quality). They will just tell you absolutely anything to get a sale. We had the worst time trying to book our tour to Halong Bay and it was the same just trying to get a bus ticket to Vientiane.
We could never get a straight answer out of any of the travel agencies as to how many bus companies travelled the route, what the difference in the prices / standard of bus was, how long it would take etc. Half the agencies told us that there was only one bus company driving that route, the other half told us there were tonnes of different ones. All the agencies told us that the company they used was a "tourist bus" with aircon etc, not a dodgy local bus.
In the end, we ended up booking the cheapest ticket we could find which was about US$12. The lady assured us that the ticket was for the tourist bus which was a big bus with comfy reclining seats and aircon. (You probably think we were pretty naive and stupid buying her story. But hey, later we found out that one of the other tourists on the horror bus paid US$40 for her ticket! At least we weren't ripped off as well as lied to). The agency told us that the bus would pick us up at our hotel at 5.00pm. I knew that something was probably amiss when it hit 5.30pm and they still hadn't arrived to pick us up. When we checked our receipt, we noticed that neither the name of the company that sold us the ticket, or any of their contact details were on there. Luckily Paul remembered where their office was. When it hit 6.00pm, our hotel suggested that we go and ask them what was going on. So Paul dashed off to the office while I waited at the hotel.
About 10 minutes later, Paul was back with a couple of motos in tow. They had forgotten to pick us up! We had to jump on the motos (with our massive back packs I might add) and go to where the bus was waiting for us. We hooned through the streets of Hanoi at crazy speeds on the back of the motos trying to catch up with the bus. We must have been on the back of the motos for at least 20 minutes - it was pretty crazy. We finally turned into a dirt road in the middle of an industrial area and the moto drivers dumped us off on the side of the road. There was no bus there.
This other guy turned up who spoke a bit of English and he tried to tell us that we had to pay for the motos! I couldn't believe they were trying to rip us off like that when they were supposed to pick us up at the hotel over one hour ago! Needless to say, we refused. The guy started to yell at us but we just refused to pay so he ended up giving up. After a few minutes, the dodgiest looking bus ever pulled up! It was really old and it had a few Vietnamese people already onboard. A couple of guys jumped out and climbed onto the roof of the bus. They motioned for us to hand up our backpacks so they could put them on the roof with some other cargo that was already there.
Now bear in mind that we had been assured that this was a tourist bus. This was like no tourist bus we had ever seen! If the lady had told us this was a local bus we would probably have expected it to be dodgy - but we weren't warned. We didn't want our backpacks going on top of the bus. What if they fell off or it rained? We refused to put them on the roof and motioned towards the compartment underneath the bus, asking if we could put them in there. The guy who spoke English told us we couldn't put them in there because it was full. He opened the compartment to show that it was full of square white packages. Hmmmm, this was getting worse and worse.
In that case then, we said, we want to take the bags onto the bus with us. At this point it looked like there was plenty of room. The guy who spoke English refused again. He started yelling at us to put our bags up on the roof. Right about this point, about 5 other tourists rocked up. They weren't too keen on putting their backpacks onto the roof either but eventually a couple of the tourists did. After that, we all capitulated and all the bags ended up on the roof.
After the bags were up on the roof, we went to get on the bus. The inside was so dirty and cramped. The seats were all made out of plastic and they were filthy, as were the crazy curtains on the windows. (At one point during the bus ride, one guy must have been carsick because he threw up into a plastic bag, then wiped his mouth on the curtain. Eeeeeeeew!!! After that, I didn't touch the curtains for the rest of the ride). We started to walk down aisle of the bus. About 2 metres down the aisle, we saw that there were more of the square white packages all over the floor of the bus and under the seats. They were everywhere - packed in tight all over the floor of the aisle, up under the seats - even stacked up where you were supposed to rest your feet when you sat down. We had to climb over the packages to get down the back of the bus. Apparently this is where foreigners have to sit because they were yelling at us to get down the back.
About halfway down the bus, one set of seats had been taken out on either side. They were using this area for storing more luggage and packages. The cargo was stacked at least waist height on both sides. We chose seats down the back and sat with our knees practically up to our chest with our feet resting on the white packages. Because there was hardly any room between the seats and because of all the cargo, we each took one set of two seats for ourselves.
Eventually the bus took off. At this point, some of the tourists moved down to the front of the bus, where there was less cargo. There were still some of us up the back, and two tourists were right on the back seat. The aircon in the bus had been on while we were getting on, but soon after we started driving, it was turned off. We had to open the windows to get some air.
After a while, we realised that we weren't going to be the last people to get on the bus. The bus kept stopping to get more cargo and more people. At one point, they loaded these huge green rectangular packages onto the bus, bigger than a bale of hay (but not so wide). These they rolled up the aisle and stacked between the seats. This meant that we couldn't see the person on the other side of the aisle and we had to climb almost up to the roof to get out of the bus.
They also loaded a tonne of cargo into the very back seat. The two tourists who were sitting there were surrounded on all sides by cargo and luggage up to the roof and even under their feet. A couple of times they tried to argue with the people putting the luggage on them but they just got yelled at.One of the tourists, the only other girl on the bus at this point, decided to move to sit in the seats where all the cargo was stacked in the middle of the bus. This turned out to be a bad move as they just kept dumping more cargo on her. Sometimes she barely even had time to snatch her legs out of the way before they threw stuff on her! She tried to argue a couple of times but they just threw more stuff. At one point, when we stopped to pick up some more cargo, she tried to ask the driver whether she could get her backpack down off the roof.
I guess she figured that if everyone else's luggage was going to go inside the bus (and on top of her), then so could hers. The driver refused to look at her and she told us later that one of the other guys on the bus had slapped her on the butt and told her to get moving back into the bus. All we heard was her yelling "Don't f****** touch me!".Eventually so many people got on the bus that we had to relinquish our space and Paul came to sit with me. We moved out some of the white packages from under our feet but we still had hardly any room. If you tried to put your seat back, the people behind you would complain and push on it because they were also sitting there with their legs up to their chest with hardly any room. The other female tourist cut into one of the white packages with her little pocket knife - we could see it was some kind of small metal parts. At least it wasn't drugs! The bus ended up so full that there was barely room for anyone to move.
We then spent a very long, very cramped and very hot night driving to the border with Laos. I'm sure all the tourists wondered whether the bus was going to stop in the middle of nowhere and demand crazy amounts of money to get us to our destination. I was so fed up at this point that I figured I would rather be on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere than on a bus with people who practically assaulted you. Luckily, the more people that got on the bus, the less likely this was to happen. With a fully loaded bus, we were pretty safe in this respect.
We eventually reached the border around 5.00am. We were all exhausted as we had been sitting upright all night and it was very hard to sleep. I was near the window and because it was so hot we had it open all night. It was very hard to sleep with the wind buffeting me all night long and howling in my ears. Just as well it didn't rain.
After a few hours waiting at the border post, it finally opened at around 7.00am. We had to pay a US$1 "stamping fee" to have the Vietnamese officials give us an exit stamp. I was actually surprised the "stamping fee" wasn't more, especially when I saw that it took three officials to stamp the passport (one to scan the passport, one to stamp it and one to check the stamp). It took at least 15 minutes to get the stamp. Then we had to walk a couple of hundred metres down the road to the Laos border post to get our visas. This took about 45 minutes and we had to pay another US$1 "stamping fee" as well as US$30 for the visa.
This was another crazy rigmarole. First, we had to go to one window to fill out the application form, submit our passport and get a receipt. Then we had to go to another window to pay the fee and have the receipt signed. Then we had to go back to the first window with the receipt to collect our passport and another piece of paper. Then we had to take the passport and a piece of paper to a third window and submit it there. Then we had to go to a fourth window and wait to collect the passport! It was so woefully inefficient - we were all worried in case it took too long and the bus took off and left us behind! At this point we wouldn't put anything past them!
However, eventually we all got our visas and it turned out that the bus was still undergoing a customs inspection back at the Vietnamese border post. We waited around on the side of the road for the bus to come pick us up. The border post was very pretty - it was in the mountains next to a clear stream and it wasn't too hot at this point.
The bus finally arrived and that was the last of the excitement for the day. We eventually made it to Vientiane at around 5.00pm the next day - almost 24 hours after we were supposed to start the bus ride. We were sooooo exhausted we went straight to the hostel we had picked and checked in, even though I hadn't eaten since lunchtime the day before and all Paul had had to eat was a few biscuits (we did stop a few times at little shacks in the country but we were too scared to eat anything there). We jumped straight in the shower - our clothes were caked in dirt (mind especially) from sitting near the open window with all the dust from the roads coming in. My hair was filthy and when I washed it the water ran black. It was soooo gross.
Rural Laos was very pretty though. In Vietnam it seemed that no matter where we went there were people everywhere. Laos was a lot prettier as there were fewer people and the scenery on the drive from the border to Vientiane was very nice. Once we had had a shower, we headed down to the riverfront to get some food. There are a bunch of food stalls that overlook the Mekong and sell freshly grilled seafood and meat. We ordered so much food we could barely eat it all. We were so starving from having practically no food on the bus.
As a few days have passed now since we arrived, I have started to forget how horrible the bus was. The thing is, it wasn't actually that bad IF you had known what it was going to be like and could adjust your expectations. The reason it was so horrible was because we were expecting something completely different and weren't prepared for the reality. However, the whole thing was made a lot worse by the attitude of the driver and other people running the bus (it always seems to take between 3 - 5 people to run a bus). They were quite rude and aggressive towards the tourists and if I had have been travelling alone I would have felt very intimidated.
So far, we both like Vientiane very much. I was so excited when we first arrived and I went to Talat Sao (the main market in Vientiane). All around me were the wall hangings that I had admired while I was in Hanoi! They weren't Vietnamese after all - they were imported from Laos. The silk and cotton weaving that they do here is unbelievable - it is so beautiful. Paul gets so bored with me always going on about it but I find it so interesting. Today I went out to a training centre where women are trained to weave traditional Laos textiles. You can see how they do the weaving and create the dyes from natural products like flowers etc. I even got to dye my own scarf.
From Vientiane we will be heading to Vang Vieng which is apparently the action capital of Laos, and after that to Luang Prabang.
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