When Mika and I left for this trip we knew it would inherently involve a lot of traveling, mostly on public transportation. What we didn’t know is that every time we got on one of these public vehicles we were unconsciously signing up for an adventure. Now I know we have shared many of these adventures before but some of the things that happened on our way from Laos to Vietnam take the cake.
I must admit that leaving Laos left me feeling a little sad. While the food left little to be desired, the people and the landscape more than made up for it. It is a country that will probably be completely different in 5 years and unrecognizable in 10. I am happy to have seen it before Western culture and the Chinese can turn it into something it was never intended to be and only hope that someone or something along the way can find a way to preserve what makes Laos so beautiful. But as always, we move on. Vietnam beckons and there are plenty more places to see.
The first step of any good journey is to actually find out what is involved, how long it will take, etc. It’s a process we are experts at and seem to repeat every week or so whenever we make big jumps. This trip however, uses a border crossing that is so new that no one knew exactly how to do it. We got mostly shoulder shrugs whenever we asked travel agents or tour bookers on the proper route. The few answers we did get contradicted each other and were thus even less helpful. By the time we left, it was the tuk-tuk driver that brought us to the bus station that gave us our itinerary with conviction. The trip from Lam Namtha to the Vietnamese border town of Diem Bien Phu requires 3 buses. One is a normal transfer in a town called Udomxai. The other is due to a river that runs through Laos that still remains bridge-less and thus un-crossable by wheeled vehicle. The first two legs were 8 hours of uneventful traveling through even more gorgeous terrain. The road followed a river through valley after valley, winding endlessly throughout the afternoon. I should mention that the second bus doubled as a cargo truck and the floor was covered in 35 kg bags of corn, rice and god knows what else. At one point a man with 2 live chickens tied at their feet got on (the chickens were placed under my seat, of course). This is all par for the course and almost expected when we travel! We spent the night in a small town where we found a lively restaurant to have our last meal in Laos. It was here that we ran into a Japanese man we had met in Muang Ngoi a week or so before – small world. Jonah, in particular got very excited because he has discovered that he has a fascination with the Japanese bowing culture – or any bowing culture for that matter. Our friend gave him the chance to bow at just about everything he said!
The river crossing began at 5:30am. At the time we didn’t understand why so early and our inquiries weren’t exactly translating right. So at 5am we woke, packed and headed down to the river to catch the boat. There were a couple other people there including an Italian lady who ended up yelling at me because I got on the boat before she did. Buon Giorno to you too lady! Once across we were met by the next bus that was to take us across the border and onto Diem Bien Phu. We were told that we had to leave so early because parts of the road were only open from 10am to 12pm due to construction. We had to get through those areas before that.
The first hint that this was going to be an interesting journey was that the bus floor was lined in 35 kg bags of MSG (it is the most common ingredient in all Lao food). There must have been 15 bags in all covering the entire floor of the bus so that our feet never touched floor. The second hint was the fact that the windshield was being held onto the bus by string and it was completely shattered. See the picture below because I cannot accurately describe how bad this was. It actually looked like the bus had just been in an accident but there was really no other damage to the front end. We could not figure out how the driver could see anything without looking out his side window. If it wasn’t so early and we weren’t so dazed, we probably would not have agreed to get on the bus, but we really didn’t have any other option.
Surprisingly the windshield didn’t seem to be an issue with anyone but us. I guess by now that really shouldn’t surprise me! Anyway, off we went. We drove for about an hour and a half on a road in the midst of construction. I’m not sure what happened to our timing because when we hit the part of the road that was under construction two excavators were actually piling dirt onto the road. What humored us the most was that a guy from our bus got out, ran to one of the machines and started operating it, piling more dirt on! We stared, laughed and took pictures like good tourists! Two hours later they had the piles leveled out so we could pass and on we went. This happened one more time before we reached the border, although this time only for an hour and with less laughing.
The border crossing was relatively painless and we were surprised not to be hit up for more money. The “Falang Shakedown” is well documented at the Vietnamese borders. The iPhone carrying guards were relatively pleasant and welcomed us into our first communist country! Amongst ourselves we questioned how we were going to be received from this point forward due to that little war we all fought together.
By 3pm, two hours late, we made it to a rainy Diem Bien Phu. We had a quick lunch, restocked our snack supply and enjoyed our first Vietnamese coffee. The Vietnamese give a whole new meaning to strong coffee. This stuff had legs and could get up and kick you where it counts. We reviewed our choices, considered the weather and made an executive decision to get out of dodge asap. At 7pm we boarded one of the plushest overnight buses we have been on. Everyone got their own little “pod” with pillow and blanket and you had to take your shoes off before boarding. We had bargained very hard with the bus people and were happy to be traveling in such style.
About an hour into the journey we realized just how hard we had bargained. A guy came through asking for tickets and requested that we pay the extra difference that we had previously negotiated. He couldn’t speak a lick of English so he basically just stood there with his hand out writing numbers down on a piece of paper. The guy in the pod next to me tried to help translate and eventually got a friend on the phone to help. So there I was, negotiating via a friend of a friend on a cell phone for a ticket I already bought on a bus that was at least an hour from the only town I knew in Vietnam. Oh, and it was dark and rainy to boot. I knew I could only push so far because at some point he was going to stop the bus and tell us to get out! I think it was a matter of endurance because he finally gave up! Another Falang Shakedown averted! Well almost at least – the Vietnamese guide book that we had traded for only a couple hours beforehand was swiped from Jonah’s pod during a potty break. I guess that’s the price we paid for the cheap tickets.
We arrived in Hanoi around 6am, 48 hours after we began. A shower, quick nap and some breakfast and we were ready for country #10. This one should be interesting.
-Alan
No comments:
Post a Comment