Sudicial Symphonies

Trip Start May 03, 2008
1
6
47
Trip End May 02, 2009

Flag of Vietnam  , Hanoi,
Thursday, May 15, 2008

Left Phonsavan early (very early) o the 15th, we were expecting the usual weaving roads and mixed bus of locals and tourists, nope we got on a bus where we were the only tourists bar an Malaysian couple and the bus should have been out to pasture a long time ago. The thing must have been over 20 years old easily. Oh and that Malaysian couple were only ones who could speak English on the whole trip including driver and border control but I'll come back to that later. The bus' air conditioning was effective though, open window close window although this was slightly effected by the fact that quite a few of the locals would light cigarettes on the bus at times and blow ash around everyone . Also because of the height of the normal person in Asia and the height of me, seats aren't the most comfortable. This bus was so packed that they seated about ten people on the back chairs and people were sitting all the way up the aisles on tiny plastic chairs, luckily I had a seat although I did have to fight for 12 hours for the armrest with the guy in the aisle beside me!

After what seemed hours we reached the border which is pretty desolate, got off the bus a walked to one building to get stamped out of Laos (all guess work on what to do) and then walk about five minutes to the Vietnam side. We were expecting them to go through our bags which we weren't looking forward to as they were both quite full. Indeed when we called with a "here, you!" frantic pointing we didn't know what to think. All was grand though, the guard even broke ranks and laughed at Marie Therese's bag as it was so stuffed. Back the bus for more fun.

The roads in this region were even worse than Laos, admittedly this is not how most tourists cross the border the but they seemed to be building the road we were traveling on. We reached the coastal town of Vinh at 7 that night hoping we could a way to get to Hanoi that night as we didn't really want to stay there. As we got off the bus a guy came up and told us he had a bus that left for Hanoi in hours time. We had a look at it and though great it's brand new and everything. Soon after we left realized that the guy who spoke English was not on the bus, no one on the bus spoke English in fact apart from a few words and also they decided to play blaring music all night!! Had the same to a certain extent on the Phonsavan where they watched some really bad Laos music videos. Music videos out here come in two forms the old style which is shot with a man or a woman walking along a river looking sad or a video which contains some love story between a woman and a solder. The new style is the most saccharine sweet awful pop videos in the world. In other words another 7 hours of this while we drove to Hanoi and arrived at 6 in the morning didn't put us in the best of moods.
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