Finally...! nearly leaving laos!
Trip Start
Sep 03, 2008
1
29
117
Trip End
??? ??, 2009
Hue,
Vietnam
Thursday, October 30, 2008
wednesday 15 october
right, so after all that commotion from the night before, we wake to find that room number two and three next door have both checked out, which gives us the opportunity to go take a look at the state of number two's bathroom after drunk girl fell through that morning. and what a state it was! the sun light is shining down through the hole in the red roof, and there are pieces of roof and bathroom ceiling tiles, as well as whole chunks of the toilet cystern, scattered all over the floor. man, that girl sure didn't die, but she had to have done herself some damage in that fall! anyway, having looked around the bathroom, it seemed like in true southeast fashion, nothing was going to be done about the mess for sometime. however, nevertheless, they had still come into turn down the bed and set down fresh towels and toilet roll, as if the room might be ready for the next paying customers! very weird! after running out to get another aussie breakfast, i managed to pick myself up one of vang vieng's famed 'tubing in the vang vieng' tees - which is actually incorrect because you don't tube in the vang vieng but rather the nam song as i'm sure they're aware after all these years, but probably can't be arsed or able to correct the error - which sean had turned his nose up before, not being a fan of any tourist to walk the streets showing off the fact that they've been somewhere fantastic because they have the t-shirt, but which i think he's actually quite jealous about now, as the whole tubing experience and owning the t-shirt has somehow manifested itself as making you feel like you participated in some kind of exclusive club! if that rant makes any sense?! anyway, after checking out, we took a mini-bus to vientiane. the journey was pleasant enough, no bags of rice or guards with guns, just tourists. my only problem then was the fact that there were some really annoying tourists on that bus that could not stop talking as though travelling was simply about partying and that several of them were so low on money that they were planning on their next phone call home to ask for more money. god, i know both i and sean hate talking about money and having to budget most everyday, and even though travelling has turned out to be a little more expensive, i will persist on spending as little as possible before i call anyone to ask for more. saying that, note to mum and dad (!), the money situation is ok, but despite my slagging off of all these preppy kids, who spend too much on cocktails and expensive accomodation, i may need you to deposit just a little of that money taken out, for southeast asia, before the biggy for the aussie entry goes in! but don't worry too much. i don't need that much more and anyway i'll email you when it's closer to the time! right, back to the bus trip. my other problem was having to keep seeing the rundown homes that people in rural laos have to live in, and as much as i liked them before, seeing so much poverty does depress you after a time. anyway, only other thing to say about the bus trip was that during a stopover for the toilet etc, i got to buy my first ice cream! for all the weeks we've been out here, i haven't dared touch ice cream because all the health sections in all the books say don't, but you can't go too wrong with a walls cornetto! finally we arrived in vientiane, in the early evening and in the midst of the boat festival still going strong! and what a party they'd been having! the roads were full of people, locals and tourists, and those selling food and fireworks and balloons, and stalls selling clothes and toys and novelty photos of you and your loved ones; and covered with a wet soggy carpet of rubbish, brought about the rain and people treading on it to form a pulpy mess! each street was so full of people and stalls and parked up mopeds and restaurants jutting out onto the pavements, that we had no choice but to walk down the middle of the road, lugging our belongings, swerving to miss oncoming locals, mopeds, and cars, all doing their very best to get through, though very few making any progress! finally, after walking the streets for quite some time, and wet from the rain, sean dumped me off at a cafe while he went in search of somewhere to stay. however, unfortunately, we were to have no luck where budget accomodation was concerned. and having not planned on the boat festival still taking place, we had not thought to book a cheap sleep and so finding them all 'FULL', all we could do was to check into a more expensive hotel - the orchid hotel - which was certainly not worth the handful of extra $15 dollars we had to hand over. ah well, i gathered the next morning we would do our best to check out and find some place new. after getting ready for that evening, we found ourselves at a local restaurant, where the staff seemed to keep looking at us, and couldn't fathom what we'd ordered, and the staff of which all seemed to be half cut from that day's activities! nevertheless, the food was good, though no tip was left as, after the owner muttered something in lao about falang being here, i couldn't stand to pay someone who acted like they didn't care for our business. as we like to say in england, 'don't bite the hand that feeds you'! after tea, we head back to the room to watch very, very bad tv, none of which was english speaking or even possessed subtitles, and one particular programme, which seemed to be four thai folk talking about the world's economic crisis and laughing?!
thursday 16 october
this morning we had breakfast in the sabadee cafe, where i'd been dumped off by sean the night before, before asking next door if they had any cheap rooms going spare. it seemed that 'next door', otherwise known as the youth inn, which we hadn't been able to get in the previous night, and the sabadee cafe were both owned by the same people, so here was the perfect opportunity to just run in, ask for a room, check out the room, pay for breakfast, go back to the orchid, check out of the orchid, and check into the youth inn all in an hour! good job! $7, we'll have some of that! after picking up just enough kip to last us the next couple of days left in laos, we head out to find the shooting range, swimming pool and bowling alley, all of which would come to play a part in the day's activities. after checking out the prices to fire a lethal weapon (too much fun had by myself!), we checked out the bowling alley simply so i could go for the most desperate toilet break of my life! dicky tummy is not fun people! afterwards, back at the shooting range, we were faced with some pretty scary looking characters, who looked like they lived to become killing machines, firing round after round at the target, no misses, all shots extremely close to, if not on, the bullseye! all this going on, sean negotiating gun type and bullets, i wasn't sure whether i was even meant to be there being that i really was the only girl in the place, bar the owner's wife and her friend who were playing cards at a nearby table. nevertheless, we set down a rifle - still don't know anything about guns! - and a box full of bullets, as well as our first target, before sitting down and leaning forward to fire, like you see those men doing during target practice in the movies! and it was very fun! nothing like playing duke nuken, like we used to do on the computer back in the day! no siree! i think shooting could be my new hobby of choice when back to england! very good time and i beat sean on points! hahaha! afterward we went for a swim. only owning a bikini, which seems a little tiny because i didn't have a whole lot of choice having bought it out on ko samet, i did wonder whether i might offend half of the laos population, especially the old lady sat at the reception table, but in the end, i had to bare myself or i wasn't going swimming! saying that, not that there was much swimming to be had, as we think we might have stumbled in during a practice because despite there only being two lanes set up, the rest of the pool was still taken up by THE most athletic men and women i have ever seen in laos! baring in mind that so many of them spend so much time watching tv or sleeping when they're meant to be working in a shop or serving you in a restaurant, these few were like robots, swimming length upon length, up and down, front crawl, backstroke, breast stroke, even butterfly! i for one couldn't keep up, being that i seemed to have become the most unfit person ever, while sean had to get out of the pool all together because his eyes had been burnt red raw by the sheer amount of chlorine in the pool. i myself, not even being able to swim properly because i won't put my head under the water, was ok but had to follow soon after, after feeling like i was getting in the way of these abnormal alien creatures! that evening we went for an indian, before heading off to play four games of bowling, which, ordinarily would cost you a small fortune in england, cost just 48,000 kip total or, get this, three to four pounds! after an amazing start by me - a strike on my first go - my game went out the window and sean beat me! after his all round win, we went for a game of pool, where he beat me again! i think he enjoys playing against me because he knows i'm rubbish and so he'll win every time! but at least we're not betting! after a pitcher of beer, we stumbled back to the youth inn to find the main doors locked, but the adjoining cafe doors open for us, where inside we discovered half of the inn and cafe staff sound asleep, wrapped up in blankets on the sofas! like i say, these people eat, sleep, go to toilet, work and watch tv exactly where you and i, the following day, will eat our morning baguette!
friday 17 october
this morning we had a far too expensive breakfast in the 'sticky fingers' restaurant. we had read in the lonely planet and menu that they did a hangover breakfast and, being that the place was aussie inspired, we believed that their breakfast would be as good as that, which we'd had in vang vieng. unfortunately, it was not, and instead was overpriced and consisted of not nearly enough food to call itself a substantial hangover cure! but you live and learn! after breakfast, we did some laundry, went for a short walk by the mekong river, looked at the monstrous high-rise hotels that stretched along the length of the river and stopped for another fruitshake. that afternoon we read! in the evening we had an entire fish - including head and face, wide eyed, and mouth open ready for a chat - for dinner, before heading out to email the bad news that we would be flying out to hanoi the next day, with laos airlines! mud sticks! on the way home, we clocked a pack of hookers, who were very pretty... and apparently lady boys! god, no wonder so many drunk men get themselves in trouble! and i stop for a moment just to ask the question, what man goes for lady boys? i mean the face shows a woman so i'm not thinking said male client is gay, but downstairs this 'woman' has a penis so said male client has to be into that in some way?! and who's in the driving seat? you all know what i mean! sorry mum and dad, not what you want to be reading, but as you know, sometimes i look at the world like a kid! and it is an odd place! that saying 'eeee, there's nowt so queer as folk' - thanks google! - is certainly true! ah, this sort of thing, that no-one talks about, but everyone wonders about, i will never understand! maybe it should be taught at school - probably these days between the ages of ten and twelve because the world seems to be so screwed up with child mums - as advanced sex ed!!!
saturday 18 october
today we leave laos and arrive in vietnam!
haha, mission complete!
this morning we rush through breakfast in the sabadee cafe before getting packed up and picking up a tuk tuk to take us to the airport, where we experience the quickest check in ever! passports, e-ticket, thank you very much, luggage on the conveyor belt, here are your boarding passes, done! and the lady on the desk was really friendly too, which is always good to see at an airport, where people are usually at their most anxious around flying! on the other hand, the guys are passport control were less so! while checking in, we bump into len and joe from vang vieng and have a cup of tea with them before it's time to go. now, i think, we had a good flight, but sean now tells me that he was not convinced. he didn't like the take off, he fought the engine sounded like it was about to pack up at any minute, and apparently the plane tilted as the wheels touched back down on the tarmac. i don't know, being that we were only up in the air for an hour or so, it all seemed ok to me, even the odd vegetable croissant and cake, packed in a krispy kreme looking box, given to us for lunch! saying that, the only part of the flight that i did not was that the plane was tiny and i'm still playing around with the question of whether a larger, heavier plane is safer or if this weight will cause it to fall out of the sky quicker OR if a smaller, lighter plane is such that a few gusts of wind will cause it to spiral out of control and land on the ground like a leaf that's fallen from a tree branch? who knows? we survived anyway! stepping off the plane in vietnam, it finally felt like we were really entering the next new country on our trip, which was a nice sensation, as this hadn't happened when crossing through thailand and laos. i think because that border had been travelled through overland, on foot, and by boat, and because we could see laos from thailand and later vice versa, it felt like we hadn't really travelled anywhere new. however, between passport control in laos and next in vietnam, and with the knowledge that we'd just spent a substantial amount of time in a 'space', which we could neither pinpoint as being laos or vietnam; and with the same feeling you get when you step off a plane when going to a new country just for a short holiday; it really felt like this was most certainly a new country on our travels.if that makes sense?! at passport control, we showed off our horribly expensive visas and i was asked where i intended to stay while in hanoi. now, obviously sean and i had chatted about this already, but i had no idea of the name of the hotel we hoped to go to, being that every hotel name sounds the same; and so faced with the stern-looking passport man, i had to go with sean, len and joe's shouts of the 'hanoi backpackers hostel', otherwise he was not going to let me pass! after they'd done the same, we collected our bags and negotiated a very cheap price for a taxi, for the four of us, with the official taxi ladies stood outside of arrivals. what we didn't know at this point was, even if said ladies were kosher, that did not mean the taxi driver was so, which we soon discovered after being dropped in the midst of the old quarter, hanoi! so, what happened was, the taxi stopped outside a hotel and a tout came up to the window to confirm where we wanted to stay. and without thinking he might be a con artist, we happily gave him the exact names of the hotels, the lonely planet had recommended, and the road name they were on. and with that, within seconds, he'd pulled out a business card for one of the two hotels we'd mentioned, and, if i can recall, he said it was full, but that he could take us to his 'friend's' second hotel. well, sean, having read up on most of the scams, he advised us to head round the corner away from the tout - our taxi had long since driven off - and make our own way to this street. all i can say is thank god for the four of us, because we would have been eaten alive had any of us been travelling alone, or even just as two seperate couples. the touts were out in force, all saying certain places were full, and if we could just follow them, they have cheap room for us! we stopped at one hotel and a fellow traveller advised us not to worry about the prices quoted to us as seeming too much, and going on to explore more possibilities, as everywhere would be more expensive than the $7 we'd come to know and love. in the end, after wandering through a maze of moped packed alley ways, we found the hotels we'd been looking for and hoped to settle for the one hotel and get two double rooms together. unfortunately, despite the first hotel - manh dung guesthouse - having been recommended to us, the owner still seemed to possess the sneaky streak we had been warned about, and she would not stop asking how many nights we intended to stay and whether we would be booking a trip to halong bay with her at any time. and so, i think she was disappointed to hear sean say we'd be shopping around for a trip, and so said that perhaps we'd only be able to stay a short time with her. in hindsight, i think we came to understand that if you booked a trip with your hotel, asked for a visa extension, took breakfast with them, used their laundry facility, basically spent more money with them, they would love you. she was not going to love us however, especially when sean went to check out said 'second' hotel, belonging to lady owner's sister or cousin or best friend or neice three times removed, and said no! in the end, we were dubious about her intentions and so gave up the room to len and joe, before heading across the road to the second hotel - thu giang guesthouse - where the owner seemed very calm, probably because she actually was genuinely a good person and ran a good hotel, but it was full. it gathers! in the end, we wound up in the trung tang hotel, not recommended, though the room was good enough, but the ladies still the same, saying they had a second hotel with a sister (?) if we wanted a cheaper room, and constantly asking if we'd be leaving soon and whether we'd be booking a trip with them! no, no, no! not a great start to our time in hanoi! anyway, we checked in, met up with len and joe and went out for THE cheapest meal of noodles and meat and some sort of 'oliver' inspired broth (!) in a very local restaurant and later, to a few bars, where we were happy to sit outside on the street, on plastic stools designed by PLAYSKOOL perhaps - and just for kids - and watch as hundreds of thousands of mopeds sped by us, going nowhere we knew! that night we learnt that to get by in hanoi, we would have to step into the road and simply go for it, because waiting for a space in the traffic just does not happen! it's a dog eat dog world out there in the streets of hanoi and you go - or you stay where you are FOREVER - and just pray that the mopeds and cyclos and bicycles and women selling bananas and cars will swerve round you! we ended the night in a jazz cafe, where on the way to the toilet, you have to pass by a garage full of pastel coloured vespas - an amazing sight! and the four of us, finally arriving back at our hotels, found them both to be closed up. oh yes, it seems, despite hanoi being a massive city, the hotel owners, like the guesthouse people of laos, live by a strict curfew of 11pm, closing up time! well, despite that, that wasn't going to stop us staying out till the early hours, to drink bai hoi at 3,000 dong a pop / 10p in our money! woohoo! cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap!
right, so, we are in vietnam! finally! not up to date yet, but at least i'm writing about the same country i am in! x.
