Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Well what a horrible bus journey!When they say its the bus journey from hell i thought they just met time wise but proves that there is more to a bus ride than it seems.First of all we were on the hot sweaty bus to Vientiene that took 6 hours.It went quick enough and we were happy the first part was complete.When we got to Vientiene we got on a tuktuk taxi for about 30mins to the bus park.We basically got shuffled from 1 place to another by the rude Laos people and it wasn't very nice when you have a hangover and a long bus journey ahead.
At the bus station we all hopped off and were again ushered to the 'hanoi' bus which was just full of locals, potatoes, rice, chickens and god knows what else. We were handed a little child's plastic stool to sit on in the aisle.It was a 22 hour trip to Hanoi!Sitting on a seat was going to be hard enough let alone with all your bags, 10 other people on an already cramped bus so we refused to get on in it as we had paid for a seat.After another 30-45mins of waiting and arguing about which bus we were on, magically another bus was also heading to Hanoi, o and it was barely 30% full....funny that.So we got on to that and started our crazy journey.
The Laos side isn't too bad, its just slow.We stopped about 11pm and with no-one telling you what is happening it turned out we were there for the night waiting for the Vietnamese border crossing to open at 7am. They woke us up at 5am by turning the lights on, shouting whilst standing next to each other and generally being a bit rude.At 6am they handed immigration cards out to fill in and 7am we had the mad rush of getting through the passport control as quick as possible to beat the rush.We got our stamp, with a magic 10,000kip exit fee and walked 1km to the Vietnam border.This was hell.
No-one explains what is happening and you are getting pushed around by the Vietnamese and trying to understand what they are saying.It took over an hour to work it all out and cost $2 magic entry fees again.The Vietnam border is tight on who and what it lets into the country and every bus that went through the luggage was emptied off.Now on some of these local buses there are rice, chickens, the lot stored on top of these buses and it took forever to get through.After an hour of waiting we saw our bus....drive over the far side of the border car park.Turned out after another hour of waiting they had a special check on our coach L which they took the lights off and went through everything!Not good when you get about 1 hour sleep on an already 16 hour journey.
Finally we were off on Vietnam land.Cow and Carts were everywhere and so were traditional farmers.Walking the cow/bulls and dragging a wooden plow along is old school and these were some of the poorest people in the country earning $2 a day.Alot of agricultural workers now scavage for metal like tin to weigh in as this can earn around 4 times that of a farmer.This has also cleared up some of the 800,000 land mines that are still missing of which have killed 40,000 people in the last 10 years.
6pm after counting down so many sign posts updating us with the amount of kilometres left we came across an accident that involved an arctic lorry and a moped.It ended in what to me looked like a body lying in between 2 of the wheels but we couldn't see it properly.
8pm we actually arrived and was met by a Vietnamese lady offering $1 taxi's to her TAT.Basically we got a fairly priced taxi in return for going to her hotel and because all of us had been dreaming up of a KFC we jumped in and left as soon as we got there.I got my Dong and my bank balance statement of 32million dong (just over £1,000) we tried to find KFC.This would usually be pretty simple but we were all so tired and just wanted food and a nice bed.sHalf an hour of searching we got there.The smiles on our faces were of relief and the smell of chicken.But, being in Vietnam, this wasn't going to be as simple as usual.They had 15 pieces of chicken between 8 of us and we were all wanting atleast 6 piece buckets.They had 1 kind of burger left and nothing else!I was the 1 that was first to miss out on the chicken but Nati gave me a piece of his and after a short argument they magically put some popcorn chicken in for me.I also got chips and i think was given complimentary fries as well.Everyone was full and headed off for some accommodation
We had a name of a place we wanted to go and before it has worked but this was a capital city and we never thought to get the address as taxi drivers would know it....yeah right.But then magically the taxi max knew where it was and so we hopped in, looking forward to our bed, when he turned up at what can only be described at The Ritz of Hanoi.It was the poshest place in the city.Did we really look like we would be stopping there? Lol idiot.But he got his money and we went to a wifi cafe to look for a cheap place.We found one, got an address and a taxi that actually got us there but ended up in a hotel a few doors down.It was $8 a night but i got it for $6 and it was pretty good.But its been our most expensive room yet, even having its own tv!We slept like logs that night.
Woken by the beeping coming from outside (we were 5 stories up!) I checked thetime....1pm!It was good though JWe spent most the day just chilling and looking around the city.We went back about 10pm after failing to find the nightlife and wated a bit of friends until about 1am and getting back in the sack.
We had previously moved rooms to 1 that could sleep 3 people (double and a single) rather than Nati on a temporary bed on the floor and we were now at the back of the hotel with no natural sunlight.Again, no alarms were set but we did have a plan to get up and see the Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum which was open 8am-11am.I kept waking up with it being pitch black and the odd faint beep I gave up and decided to check the time on my laptop, 12:20pm.Overslept again, so i facebook a bit in bed and left them to it until 1 ish.
The plan for the afternoon was to head to the Hoa Lo Prison which was a prison built by the French and held Vietnamese people during the French Colonial Age and also the American pilots that had been shot down including senator John McCain. We got in the taxi as they were all saying 'meter, meter' and thought they were genuine.Tuens out there are different rates and he must of whacked it on the top rate as it cost a small fortune.It must of made his day,,,but we didn't know at the timebut were a little confused.The museum was ok.Its now very small from what was left over from the prison when it was sold off to Italian and Portuguese Investors and turned into a shopping complex and hotel.It was ok to look around the prison but there wasn't a lot to see there.It was good to see the sewage tunnels that they used to escape out off but it was weighed heavily down on how biased the information was.All the Vietnamese kept in the prison by the French were tortures badily using anything there was but the American's that were held in there by the Vietnamese had turkey on Christmas dinner, played cards, got exercise, ate well and got postcards from home. Argh....weren't they nice!Funny how that works.
Hanoi is a crazy city though.The amount of bikes there is unbelievable and the footpaths were either bikeparks or little stalls for the locals to sell junk or food on.So it meant walking down the road, dodging the moped's which was really dangerous.It took us a few hours to work out that if you just keep edging out then they dodge you, its great.Dan actually has a video of us walking across the main swuare with 6 entrances and exits points where there are no lanes and it's just a complete mess..
Nati was starting to get on both mine and Dan's nerves and he strangely had a habit of not wanting to pay his share of everything.It all seemed to evolve around money with him and we didn't really like listening to him moaning all the time.He has begun to just follow us around now completly and just seems to want to go back to the room.Me and Dan have drunk a lot since being on this trip but at the end of the day we are travelling and i'd rather sit and have a social drink somewhere rather than sitting on my bed watching tv like he did that night.We went to a jazz bar that night and enjoyed a super strong cocktail.It was that strong the vodka in it was burning by stomach like doing an actually shot of vodka lol.We went and tried to fish out some nightlife in Hanoi but failed and ended up going back shortly after 11, watching a bit of friends and sleeping.
Bit of a lazy day the following day aswell and the plan was to just walk around and head to a place called apocolyse that Dan had heard about and shop on the way.Dan got a bag and Nati failed in his attempt to buy an ipod case.We walked for miles and got lost so again wifi it was lolWe weren't too far away but when we tracked this address down there was nothing there.Whether it had moved or just shut down we don't know but there was no sign of it.Annoyingly we walked back and had a few beers on the way.IT was nice to sit on the bank of the lake with an ice cold beer just watching the traffic.Me and Nati couldn't resist not having an ice cream from there and it was pretty dam good!Only down side was....size and price.£3 for the same sort of thing you would get back at home for that price.Bit of a shame but it was a treat and it went down well.
By that time it was a bit late to start heading all the way back to the hotel so we just wandered around and found a cool bar called 'Funky Monkey'.It was dead bar a 7 locals who were smashed, dancing like gays, falling off chairs and given strangely pointing towards me.Again, the wifi came in just to check if it was a gay bar or not.We were safe, and it wasn't but i decided not to head over to him, who i think was offering us shots of whiskey as i had my camera and backpack on me.....again a bit gay.2 beers later we headed out as Nati was yet again moaning about it being boring.He barely drank and it looked like we were forcing him to have more beer than he would normally have. Next stop was a travellers bar, 1 man sized beer and back to the hotel as were had given up looking for clubs again and were due to be up at 7:30 to go to Ha Long Bay.
- comments