Lost in 'Nam

  Vinh, Vietnam
Thursday, June 26, 2008

Wednesday morning and we get our visas for Vietnam and book our bus to Hué in 'Nam. The aim is we leave on a bus at 1.30pm to take us to Vientien, the capital, getting in at 5.30pm. The bus onwards to Hué is meant to be at 6pm, meanwhile we should be able to collect our passports (sent ahead same morning) with the visas done, from the travel agent in Vientien...um, does this smell like trouble to you?
 
We arrive outside the travel agent - and indeed we get our passports with our visas. So far so good. However it is 5.55pm and they don't seem in any hurry to get us to the next bus. Eventually we head off in a giant bus like rickshaw. The bus terminal is all the way across town as we fly through Vientien offering a quick glance at the busy smoggy city. Its 6.10, no way we are going to go so fast that time goes backwards! We are dropped at a bus which clearly states Hanoi. That's not where we're going. In fact it's the complete opposite of where we're going. We would love to go to Hanoi, but there's really not the time to go that far north on this occasion. We ask 'Hué?' over and over, and all the bus people just say 'yes' 'yes'. Um. We aren't convinced but what else can we do? All the other tourists are going to Hanoi and are pretty sure it's not going to Hué!
 

My favourite fruit!

We go and get some food and dragon fruit shakes - we've got 'till 7pm now. Then pile on to hope for the best. On return the driver is trying to put all the 'ferang' out the way at the back of the bus, and the locals at the front! Weird man - not overly friendly. Well we are already quite settled where we are in the middle of the bus thank you very much! So finally we are off on the slow journey with a couple of stops. The second stop is 3am, and we stay here for hours as apparently we have to wait for the border to open. Don't ask why the bus doesn't just leave later?! As the bus is stopped so is the air con - and don't we just feel it. We may not have noticed it was on before but now the bus is turning into a sweaty, smelly sauna.
 
Eventually about 6 or 7am we make it to the border. There's a mass of Vietnamese trying to get stamped out of Laos. Absolutely nothing is going on at the foreign desk. We wait assuming it will open. I try asking behind another window where there is actually someone sitting. Waving my foreign passport he looks like he could, possibly, be gesturing towards the Vietnamese window where all and sundry are playing argy bargey. Oh well, if you can't beat them join them. Elbows out I pile in and join the fun shoving my passport under the window and the man appears to acknowledge it, so there's hope we do want this window even if it does state Vietnamese only on it! Now I've wedged my way by the window I grab all the foreign passports (from the back end of our bus!) and shove them in through the window. A little patience and he's started stamping our pile of passports. Well that was an experience and a half.

Local hats

 
Time to enter Vietnam. We walk over the river to join the free for all brawl going on the other side. If you though the Laos officials were a bit grumpy - well that is nothing on the Vietnamese!!! We pay our 2k (10p!) to get a customs from which they have blatantly invented for the unofficial money. Now to join all the Vietnamese again. I seem to now be the passport officer for our bus so get back into position at the window. That bit is quite straightforward. We put all our passports in front of the official and wait. He takes the pile of foreign passports with the forms all neatly filled out and tucked in and places them to the side out the way. They are obviously more work than the Vietnamese as they have to enter details onto the computer. They can wait.

There is a line of officials. I am standing looking at a very serious looking officer in his green uniform. I try my hardest not to stare at his huge mole and the extraordinary hair coming out of it and focus on trying to get our passports through. There are 3 men in the line. The first has piles of green passports lined up. These keep increasing as others shove through piles of Vietnamese passports and they somehow get in front of ours. So frustrating. He must realise he has a bus full of backpackers so the bribe isn't going to come readily! We wait as the mole man slowly looks at the green passports and passes them to man 2 to stamp and then number 3 starts reading out names which no one can hear amongst the crowd of people waiting. SO slow. And then they all get up and go for a wander. What is going on?

There seems to be a swap around and another man strolls over has a look at the passports and takes a seat. Meanwhile Alicia gets the baby wipes out and offering everyone a morning wash while we wait! After that bus ride it's a good idea! I try and smile sweetly at the man who avoids any eye contact whatsoever. Really I want to jump over the desk and just stamp the passports myself.

Finally he picks up one of the piles of our passports. No, is he just moving them? Yes, one is through, finally. He picks it up and inspects it carefully and starts calling out, what are from his point of view, our strange names.  We wake up the people passed out on their bags (we had to carry through all our luggage, nothing left on the bus). After each name he inspects us to our photo, demands $1 and then passes it on to his colleague to process. There are odd protests about the $1 bribe fee as the Vietnamese visa is the most expensive already, but to be honest $1 is a small fee to pay not to be stuck in this rabble any longer. Finally all through. One more passport check then off to Vinh. We thought maybe we'd be swapping buses here - nope. We are put on the same bus. Apparently we change at Vinh...
 

Rachel in local hat

On crossing the border there is an immediate change. All the officials at the border in their green uniforms being frightfully important and incredibly unhelpful or friendly. Then immediately out of the windows we see the paddy fields with the Chinese hatted workers bent over everywhere. If an individual hasn't got a pointed Chinese hat on then they will surely be wearing the green bowl army hat instead. There are mopeds everywhere, and the bus drivers are crazy as they hold down the horn and go for it.
 
We find out our driver was drunk at stop 2. Apparently the slaps we could here at the back of the bus were to wake the driver up. We had a shaky reverse out of the stop and we were off. What could we do in the middle of the night in the dark in the middle of nowhere? His crazy driving overtaking and beeping at everything continue into Vinh. We are somewhere out of town where we stop for breakfast/lunch and we are deposited with our things in the restaurant under the assurance there would be another bus to pick us up... Its 11am and we are told our bus will be here at 1pm.  We are shattered and it's horribly hot. 

We get a snack and keep asking about our bus. Eriq even gets introduced to the apparent driver of the bus. Everyone else gets back on the bus; our other travel companions wish us luck. They have about as much faith as us on another bus turning up - especially as we have no tickets now! We wave them off and settle down back in the restaurant. The staff laugh and point. We try a bit of communication with the phrase book but it's pretty useless. One or two sit down and some conversation is tried, but they just laugh more - and it doesn't feel a kind laugh either! It becomes clear that there is no bus for us as we are thrown out of the restaurant and left in the heat of the midday by a very dust road side. Oh God! We are stuck in the heat with crazy people. There is nothing for it but for us to track down our own bus. However there are 2 major floors.
1) We have no Vietnamese Dong yet.
2) We have no Vietnamese language skills other than the phrase book which no one can read or understand our pronunciation.
This could be fun.
 

Blagging a ride To Hué

Some of the girls from the restaurant come and sit outside with us - I think so they can just laugh more obviously in our faces, but we try to think it is more friendly! We persuade them to get us a bit of cardboard and I have a marker pen (no idea how!) so we draw up a sign saying Hué. Time for some hitch hiking or to try and track down a bus. Rachel and Alicia go off up the street to see if they can find a town to get money or find out about buses. The problem is we are very isolated at a road side restaurant on an intersection. Not in the centre of a town.
 
Eriq and I sit by the road side despairing from standing at the road edge trying to see what we could flag down. We can't even get a clear answer on what direction we need to be headed - and not sure I would believe the answer we were given anyway. But god works in mysterious ways. A bus rolls on in going to Hué. A smart man communicates with us somehow on behalf of the bus driver and negotiates a lift for 100k Dong.. great, but we haven't got any Dong. We hope the others may come back with Dong. Instead they are back with another bus also going to Hué for the same price. Haggling against the 2 isn't really working. The second appears to have aircon and leaving now so we go for it. Our Hué sign we so carefully made is now obsolete! Well the aircon quickly stops as we get on. However we go the back of the bus where there are mats on the floor. Excellent we even get to lie down on this bus.

Bus with a bed!

Only problem now is to sort out paying. We may be thrown off 5 mins down the road!
 
We eventually explain we have no Dong offering all other currencies and Dollars and asking if there are ATMs en route? Somehow they don't throw us off. Perhaps our initial prejudice against all Vietnamese was a little unfair!  A Vietnamese lady joins us at the back of the bus. She has perfect English having studied in New Zealand, visited England and works for an NGO. She is lovely and kind. She hears us despairing as boiling. It is unbelievably hot.  To make it worse we are now completely out of our hot water. At the next petrol station the lady comes back with bottles of water for us all - and big ones! We try and offer her some $s but she won't accept. I think its adventures like this that make the trip. The lady even gets the bus driver to go via her offices in a town to pick up her laptop! We trundle on and after 6hrs we've made it to Hué. The bus drops us at a street full of ATMs, we pay our 400kDong and the bus disappears off into the distance leaving us by the guest houses. It's now dark and we must have been on the road for 30 hours, but time for the hostel survey. Split up and find the cheapest hostel as we wander down the street and reconvene at the end to compare results! $10 for 4 with aircon and bathroom wins today! Then out for food, we treat ourselves to a cheap posh restaurant (its usually just street food!) and then we see a French patisserie with delicious pain au chocolat. Yum!