Country Number 3!!!!
Trip Start
Nov 25, 2004
1
22
169
Trip End
Jan 26, 2005
Vinh,
Vietnam
Tuesday, December 28, 2004
We took a mini-bus from Lak Sao at midday along with 5 other Karaoke singing Vietnamese on their way home - oh yes the minibus was equipped with a full on wide-screen karaoke system! The highlight being when they put the Venga boys on full blast! Good job we bought earplugs!!! The mini-bus also could have made it in the Guiness book of records for the most amount of cargo you can fit inside a small space - we had two full-size fridge-freezers, cans of red bull hidden in every oriface of the bus, blenders, casserole dishes, bikes, crash helmets - you name it we squeezed it in. The word 'full' does not seem to feature in the South East Asian dictionaries which always makes for fun and interesting travelling!
The other thing to mention here was the sudden change in the weather! From 4 and a half weeks of blistering sunshine to full on fog, drizzle and cold! Booooooooo! The terrain on this particular border crossing also added to the adventure - the road headed up through the mountains and was half-built, add to this the weather and we felt like we were back on safari - apart from this time we were spotting 'white goods' on the bus rather than monkeys!
We eventually arrived at the border and negotiated all the forms successfully and then funnily enough had to wait around while our 'wheeler-dealer' driver tried to get all his dodgy cargo through customs! Lots of bribery later we were on our way again only to be stopped again by lots of uniformed types, having half the cargo taken off and lots of cash changing hands again! Hmmmmm!
Things got better when we arrived at the first town in Vietnam and got told we now had to get out of the mini-bus and into another one! OK..no problem...we did as we were told and then spent the next half an hour riding in circles around the town! We have no idea why but we got to know that particular stretch of road pretty well! On our way finally, everything seemed to calm down and we seemed to be making good head way when all hell let loose inside the minibus! Apparently the Vietnamese language is made up of many tones - we experienced 3 on this journey...screaming, shouting and squealing...right next to Paul's right ear! Basically when we swapped buses, our driver told us that we didn't have to pay anything once we got in the second bus as we had already paid him! Fair enough...the only problem was that the first driver hadn't told the second driver this or given him any cash! Whoops! This applied to us and the other Vietnamese in the bus who weren't happy at all!
Anyway...we arrived in Vinh as planned and booked our ticket on the overnight sleeper to Hanoi! Met some cool friends from Oz on our adventure as well (Terry & Val) who we ended up spending NYE with in Hanoi! Good things always come out of the adventures you see plus lots of stories! Are you bored yet???????
