Vientiane, Laos to Hue, Vietnam in 17 hours

It turns out that it's not that easy getting out of Laos. No matter which way you look at it, it seems to involve some sort of ridiculously long bus trip. Well, either that or buying two adorable old Minsk motorcycles for $350 with all the appropriate paperwork to make it into Vietnam. Sounds pretty good ? Only problem with that plan is that neither of us can drive these little beauties so back to the bus...

This was our longest bus trip yet and was only bearable thanks to our brand new inflatable neck pillows and the abundance of empty seats around us. On the other hand, it was one hell of a bumpy ride and the floor at our feet was quickly occupied by sleepy vietnamese people as soon as the night fell, including one who borrowed (without asking) Chris' fleece jumper to use, first as a pillow and later, as a blanket. I suspect he drooled on it a bit.

We arrived at the border at 5am and were made to wait for two hours until the crossing opening time. In that time, I enjoyed a bitter green tea, a bunch of Vietnamese men making advances to me and finally a swift case of extortion by a fraudulent wannabee border official who demanded all of our passports, loaded with a small sum of cash and collected a hefty little bundle. The only thing that made it better is that Vietnamese nationals were expected to do the same.

The actual border crossing was fine although we did notice that all the locals had reloaded their passports, maybe to get through quicker, that waiting in line is not a national past-time and that the bus driver smuggled countless boxes of pharmaceutical goods into the back of our bus.
The remainder of the trip was nothing remarkable and we arrived in Hue around 11am.

Vientiane, Laos

We stayed in Vientiane, the capital of Laos, for 6 nights which is one more than Tonsai and only a few nights less than Niseko. This extended stint was the result of multiple coinciding factors, some more fun than others.
First of all, we had to organise our Vietnamese visa as unlike every other country so far, they do not issue them on the border. That would have been fine, apart from the fact that we arrived on saturday and therefore, couldn't get anything started until monday morning. The process of getting a visa was very much as one would expect : boring, expensive and a waste of time. For what seemed like an inflated price, we could come pick it up two days later, just before Laos New Year celebration kicked in, the second reason for staying a few extra days.

When I asked one of the staff at our guesthouse how to say "Happy New Year" in Laos, he looked at me blankly, then his face lit up and he declared "water! water!" and indeed, water was the main event for the 3 days of celebrations that ensued. All over the streets, people of all ages started running around armed with anything that can contain water and release it promptly, namely water-guns, buckets, bottles etc... and everybody went to war, ourselves included. Armed with decapitated water bottles, Chris was my first victim but not my last. We attacked children, mothers, Falangs (westerners), people on scooters, people inside cars, people on the back of trucks. You name it, we splashed it! It was awesome fun and oh, so refreshing after weeks of exhausting heat.

We had planned to join in for one day and then hit the road but that was not to be. On the morning of our departure, as we hung around the internet place waiting for a free computer, a very familiar looking falang, tall and blond followed by another one, with dark hair and glasses came strolling down the street. Marcin and Rose were in town! In order to celebrate properly, we changed our ticket to the next day and promptly got into more water fighting, followed by many a beer Lao and a good noodle dinner in town. That was the life. By complete coincidence, we managed to meet up with them in a third country (after Cambodia and Thailand) and are now planning a fourth by adding Beijing as a potential meeting point in a few weeks.
That evening, a huge storm broke out and it rained all night. The sound of rain was something we had forgotten in these dry times and the cool air it brought with it was so delicious, we just wanted to go dance in the early morning light. It rained for the whole morning as well, and the electricity supply for our area must have been struck by lighting as the whole neighbourhood was deprived of water and power for most of the day which caused a slight shortage of fresh baguettes and some not so clean toilets.

Finally, after a final day in town, there was no escaping it and around 5 pm, we started a long and reasonnably painful journey to Hue in Vietnam. We waved goodbye to Laos, a country we enjoyed throughly, and once again to our friends who we will see again and continued our adventure toward Vietnam with mixed feelings of fear and anticipation.

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Vang Viang

Vang Viang is the kind of town that Australian bogans seem attracted to and never want to leave. It is enjoyable for a very short time, and once the few attractions have been ticked off, run, run as fast and as far as you can. Well, this is what we did anyway.



We only spent a full day there and paid our dues by floating down the river for the afternoon on old tractor inner tubes. To be fair, it was pretty enjoyable even if the river flowed at a mostly inert pace and Chris paddled us out of there for a good chunk of it. Most people seemed happy to hang out at the multiple bars along the river, swinging off trapezes into the water, narrowly escaping the shallow rock outcrops and basically getting hammered all day. As a result, we were the only ones actually floating down which allowed us to have a very peaceful time enjoying the magnificent limestone cliffs surrounding us.



We actually did stop at one of the bars a bit further along the river. This one was particularly underpopulated which was due in part to the fact that it was only accessible by floating and that the swings were at least 3 times as high as at any other point on the river. We decided to stop there for a quick lunch and just before our sandwich arrived, Chris decided to try one of the swings. A rusty flying fox starting from a 12m high rickety platform over the river. Coming out unscathed, he also tried the trapeze like swing which projected him high in the air and inflicted a look on his face mixing both fear and ecstasy. And then, in a completely unlikely turn of events, triggered by feelings of cowardice and Chris' encouragements, I decided that I would also try the flying fox... Determined that I would only go up the stairs and come down the only other available way, I took a deep breath and flung myself in the air, holding on to that stupid thing as hard as I could. Worried that I wouldn't have the strength to hold on, I was surprised to realize that holding on was easier than letting go and once I did, the feeling of flying through the air waiting for the unavoidable crash filled me up with pure fear. I landed heavily into the water, thinking I might be dead and numbly swam back to the bank. I was in total shock and started crying like a little girl, from fear rather than pain, while Chris watched like a parent, with a hidden smile under a look of tender compassion. Anyway, the deed was done and unusually found that it was actually worse than I expected. I will never do it again but now I know why. As soon as we started floating again, an absentmindedly driven elongated dingy nearly ran us over. Luckily we started yelling at the half-asleep driver in time for him to avoid us. As we got closer to the end, our tubes got hijacked by three children between the ages of 5 and 10. They were infinitely intrigued by our "five-fingered" shoes and endlessly fascinated by Chris' unfathomable hairiness.
The rest of our time in Vang Viang was mostly uneventful, thank goodness!