Lao Cai - border town Vietnam

Trip Start May 03, 2007
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12
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Trip End ??? ??, 2008


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Flag of Vietnam  ,
Monday, July 16, 2007

The border crossing was very easy.What we weren't prepared for, on the Vietnam side, was the sudden rush of moto and tuk-tuk drivers vying for our business. It was very in-your-face stuff. We eventually whittled the crowd down to a couple of people and took a tuk-tuk (??) to the train station. We needed to get on the overnight train to Ha Noi.

The train station was completely empty when we arrived and wouldn't be open until 4:30pm. Since it was only 10:30am we had a bit of a wait on our hands. So, we set up camp in a nearby hotel restaurant and stayed there for the day. They had a pet chicada which was making a real racket, so much noise for such a small thing.

Chin went out mid-afternoon to check if the ticket office was open a bit earlier but no such luck. He did get chatting to a guy who said he could get us tickets on that night's train and that we would have great difficulty getting them ourselves. Yeah, right. 

So, we did what most people probably would've done in our situation and waited to get the tickets ourselves- we weren't going to get ripped off....oh no.
4pm came around and Chinny went off to get us the tickets whilst I waited with our bags. By all accounts the ticket office was mayhem. Plus, just as the man had said, there were no more tickets available on that nights train. Neither of us fancied staying overnight at Lao Cai.

SO..........after a lot of effort on Chin's part he managed to get us two beds on the train (for a a price). He'd actually landed us the two beds in the attendants cabin. No questions asked, like. So much for us being the savvie tourists. Sometimes people do actually want to help you out.

We were on our way to Hanoi.
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