Sonicbridges's travel blogs:
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Vinh
Entry 26 of 52 | show all | print this entry |
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From the journal:
Arrived in Vinh today after a heroing night bus ride. Too much lao vodka, bumps, speed, techno, and soft porn to make any ride enjoyable. None of this by choice by the way. I think it's standard fare for the Vietnamese/Lao border crossing bus. The english speakers dissipate the closer you get to the border and once you cross from Lao it's all ("Babel" brad pitt movie, can't communitcate...you know the one). Now in Vietnam. the bus ride had us passing endless distant rice patties as far as the eye could see along with various other crops. There's almost this desperate sense that every spare inch of space has got to be filled up with crops and rice. Under freeways, between homes. The homes are interesting particularly in the outlying areas. You can see strong European influence detailed fixtures and trim, iron gates, tied to tall long and narrow adobe buildings. Only occasionally do you see the thatch and bamboo homes, most on the poor end seem to opt for brick and corrugated iron. But it's surprising how they dot the landscape between the occasional well kept, beautiful, newish and seemingly palatial European looking homes.
Vinh was interesting. After some men in green official outfits, military-police types hopped aboard the bus and took us to a random gas station we got off. They made us actually. Through some confusion I had come to believe that the bus driver might take us directly to the beach areas outside of town that we were craving. But instead we took off our luggage and watched as the officials opened a large brief case that had a small dog sized animal writhing around inside. With that we were dispersed. Hailed a cab with some help from a green coat and off to a hotel. After seeking some safety in what appeared to be an overpriced brew pub from holland (except of course no english, point and guess menus that had us truly guessing, all vietnamese waitresses dressed in cute dutch dresses, and pumping pop techno music) we maneuvered downtown around the massive square and statue that commemorate the birthplace of Ho Chi Minh. We went to the biggest hotel in town to finally find someone who spoke english and helped us hail a cab to the train station where we booked a train to Hue for well...a train leaving in 5 hours. It's 11pm now! The boys, that's, Trevor, Darren, and Joel...we left the couple, Pablo and Lilly back in Vientiane waiting visas to join us later. The boys wanted to get to somewhere else to celebrate Trevor's B-day tomorrow. Hue ought to offer more backpacker, traveler, options and comforts because it is a major tourist destination which I will hopefully write about soon. In Vinh aside from two women we saw from our taxi we are the only westerners we know of in this city a few hundred thousand. We are indeed a strange anomaly here proven by all the loud, awkward, excited, testing, nervous, and sometimes mass Hello's we receive. Not too mention the stares. We seem to either come across like super stars or strange and maybe even unwelcome aliens from another planet. Depends on the Hello we get or in some cases the wave or even once a flick of the middle finger?
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