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Gooooooooooood morning Vietnam!
We got here eventually. We had to postpone our bus trip by 1 day as northern Laos was hit by a tropical storm. Our guest house owners told us it would be unsafe to travel north, and it would be a 50/50 chance we would make it there safe. We didnt sleep much that night, we layed awake counting from lightning to thunder giggling like little children. We love a bit of noise and rumbles.
We got to the bus station the next night to find that our bus had already left without us. We were loaded on a different bus whilst our bus was rang and told to wait in a lay by until we caught up. We caught up and switched bus's. Me and Garath had to sit seperately for a while until someone got off. I was offered a seat by a nice young man, he offered me his seat by the window. I was about to pass him his denim jacket but put it back straight away as it was covering his AK47, and no thats not an inuendo. I suggested he sit by the window and I take the isle seat. He just laughed at me and said OK. He must of been military police or something I guess?
After 15 hours of no sleep, crazy Laos music at ear piercing levels, and crazy Colin McRay driving, we arrived in Sam Neua with lovely views of the mountains in the morning mist. We arrived early so thought 'hey! why not jump on the 15 hour bus to Than Hoa without a break' So we did.
We got on the Than Hoa bus at 8:00am and we got to the Na Maew (L) Mai Chau (V) border at 11:00am and were off again by 12:00 mid-day. We got to Than Hoa at 6:00pm and were loaded on to a bus to Hanoi. We got to Hanoi at 9:30 28.5 hours after we left Luang Prabang. It was not te best way to spend that amount of time, but needs must. There were some amazing views.
We got into a couple of taxis with an American couple and 2 German boys. We were dropped off at a guest house we had heard about. It is not clean, it is not pretty, it is cheap and dry and has a hot shower. We are not bothered by the everyday luxuries of clean towels or clean sheets anymore, we are just glad of travel towels and sleeping bags!
Today we were woken by the market downstairs. We were up and out and showered (for the first time in 48 hours, eeew gross!) by 12:00. We flagged down a guy with a seat on the front of his push bike (not sure what you would call it) and were off to the Cambodian embassy. We shall get our Cambodian Visas tomorow and they are for 1 month, valid for use within 3 months.
We walked back to the Guest house past Hoan Kiem Lake as shown in the Picture. We got tickets for the Water Puppetry show tomorow at 9:15pm. We stopped at a couple of tourist info places to get prices for Halong bay cruises. They seem quite reasonable.
We should be blogging a bit more often now were out of Laos, where the internet was slow as a snail.
Love you all lots xxxxxxx hope your all having fun
- comments
philip fantastic hear from you both soon x