I really needed to get out of Vietnam. Hanoi was an exhausting place to be. I tried to buy a counterfeit book, which are common and very cheap, however in Hanoi they try to charge real book prices. Guest houses lie to you and tell you they have rooms when the don't. They ask you to sit for 10 minutes while they "clean" rooms. It's generally a shitty place to be a penny pinching tourist. Regardless of all that, I wasn't excited about the 22 hours bus ride to Vientiane, Laos for reasons which I'm sure are obvious.
I was told to be at the guest house at 7 to be picked up to catch the bus. At 7:30 a man on a scooter came to pick me and my luggage up. I wasn't given a ticket but I was assured by the asshole lying staff at the guest house that that wouldn't be a problem. I've learned to accept a few bumps in the road by this point.
On the subject of tolerating douche bags I had a lovely time in Sapa. What a gorgeous place. I'm sure the best photos I've taken will be from Sapa. It's beauty more than outweighs all the tribe people relentlessly trying to sell you their wares. A 5 year old girl must have followed me for an hour saying "you buy from me?" I nearly bought her digerydoo type thing to reward her persistence but I don't think that would have been the right lesson to teach her. It's unfortunate that the hill tribe's people relationship with tourists has to be so commercially oriented. I certainly don't intend to imply that the hill tribe people are douche bags, they aren't.
No the douche bag story I wish to share with you takes place on the train on the way back to Hanoi from Sapa. Unlike the train ride to Sapa, the return ride had me bunked with foreigners. I remember being quite pleased with the situation. I was near the people I had trekked and had a home stay with, we could celebrate our adventure with a party in the train.
I guess we seemed fun because an Australian man, maybe in his late 30's and quite drunk by his appearance and loudness of voice, decided he would come and chat us up. He sounded exactly like Steve Irwin which is funny because I'd met some Australians at the home stay who had a much more mild accent and assured me Steve exaggerated his accent for show. The drunk Australian man was quite nice and laughed a lot. Time passed and people started turning in. As all this was happening the Australian man informed me that he didn't like my style. I thought that a good cue to turn in as well.
As I found my bed, the lowest of 3 bunks, the Australian man informed to be that he was 2 beds above me, and he was going to other cars to look for another party. I didn't think much of this as I had been on the top bunk on the way to Sapa and everything was fine. I closed the door to the room (6 beds to a room), and the swaying of the train quickly rocked me to sleep.
Ten minutes later the Australian man came back to the room and climbed up to his bunk. Ten minutes after that I heard the man belch followed by a splattering sound and a light wetness on my face. There was a women across from me who turned out to be this man's girlfriend. She grabbed my attention when she yelled "you asshole!" I recall finding this somewhat amusing. I turned my attention to my day pack and sweater that were sitting on the floor, they now had a nice spattering of vomit on them.
The girlfriend at the point had stood up and started to hit and berate her boyfriend who seemed indifferent to her words and actions. I assume he had passed out. Anyway, I arose from my bed to examine my vomit spattered bag and sweater. It wasn't so bad, my sweater had received the brunt of the upchuck and my hat was untouched. The girlfriend was now in the hallway looking for cleaning supplies.
I went to the bathroom to clean the vomit off my bag and gave my sweater a shake. The girlfriend saw that I had found tissue. She apologized to me and I pointed her to the role of tissue in the bathroom. Most of the man's vomit was on the floor so the girlfriend had get on her hands and knees to clean it. Once she finished I settled back into bed. The girlfriend decided we should keep the door open due to the vomit smell. I had mixed feelings about this as theft was common. The man said "sorry about that". What a douche bag.
Back to the trip from Hanoi to Vientiane. On the way to the bus station another traveler on a scooter I had first met in Ho Chi Min City pulled up along side me. So my scooter ride was normal. We got dropped off on the side of the road where there was no indication of a nearby bus station. The other traveler showed me the bus station which was a couple buildings away. How odd. More tourists started arriving and being dropped off at the same place. Soon we were over a dozen.
A shitty bus drove by with scooters piled on the roof and pulled into the bus station. I hoped it wasn't my bus. We waited for an hour or so and were eventually instructed to follow a man who took us to our bus that was already loaded and full of Vietnamese people. Weird. We weren't asked for tickets and were told to bring all our luggage into the bus rather than put it in the usual luggage compartment. I walked on the bus which seemed quite full and headed the back. There were few seats in the back, in place of the seats there were large Styrofoam containers . I sat next to the window and could put my feet up on the containers, which was fine by me. Bags were piled on the containers and somehow everyone fit.
The bus stopped almost every hour. I swear the bus spent more time stopped than moving. If we hadn't stopped, the whole ride would have been around 12 hours I reckon. Once we got near the Laos-Vietnam border we stopped in a small town. The driver turned off the engine and exited the bus. A couple other Vietnamese people got out too. Shortly after I started hearing noises coming from the luggage compartment, the door being opened and shut a number of times I estimated. Maybe they were changing the cargo, I don't know. This went on for about 30 minutes. Then a young Vietnamese boy who had helped us with our bags gestured to us that it was time to eat. No one wanted to eat, we just wanted to get going.
Once we got moving again the scenery changed to cliffs and green hills. The we arrived at the border. What a treat this was. I didn't feel like being one of the first into the building so I headed for the bathroom. I half expected an orderly queue once I got in the building, and half expected chaos. What I saw was chaos. I decided to try to exchange money before heading into the mass of people. This didn't prove to be any more relaxing an activity because the man behind the counter spent more time on his phone than exchanging money. I thought I'd come back later and check in on the mass of people.
It was still a mass of people. Eventually everyone just handed in their passports all at once rather than whatever the mass of people was doing. I was the second last to get my passport back. The last person and I headed out the back of the building where everyone else had left and started walking. I saw some buses in the distance and a road that disappeared around a distant corner. I couldn't see any of the other foreigners. I showed my passport to a man at a gate and walked past the gate. It turned out none of the buses were ours and when we tried to go back across the gate to see if the bus was still in the parking lot, the man at the gate said no, and pointed down the road. Wee.
We walked down the road and saw another building. Some other foreigners were walking around looking lost so we joined forces and decided to go into the building. Everyone else was there and there were giant moths fluttering about the neon lights. I filled out a form, handed it and my passport in, and got my passport back long before people who were huddled around the service window that had been there long before me. Cool.
An older drunken creepy German guy on our bus, named Heinz, took abnormally long to rejoin the bus. Some people he had creeped out expressed interest in not waiting for him. We waited another 10 minutes and he showed up. Finally we could get moving. 20 minutes later we stopped. We waited for about 20 minutes. It was starting to get hot and there was no air con in the bus. A dutch guy who was lying across Styrofoam containers like they were a bed yelled "let's go!" Someone at the front of the bus walked to the back of the bus and hit his fist on an open palm. Someone figured out that this gesture meant we were waiting for a stamp. Soon after we started moving.
Two minutes later we stopped at a bus stop. The driver turned off the engine again which means we were stopping for a while. The dutch guy was joined by other annoyed foreigners in sharing their dissatisfaction. 40 minutes later we got moving again. There were few other stops along the way. One came about when a foreigner begged the driver to stop because it had been about 3 hours since the previous stop and she had to pee. She begged for 10 minutes and had to pee in a bush. Others ran off the bus and joined her.
Vientiane was so quiet compared to Hanoi, it was heaven and the restaurants were great. After Hanoi I went to Vang Vieng which is famous for its tubing, river bars with rope swings, restaurants playing episodes of friends and other shows, and debauchery in general. It was a nice little town.
One day I rented a bike and decided to find a cave. While riding around lost a Laos man shouted to me. He road along side me and asked me where I was going. His bike broke and I stopped to talk to him. He told me he wanted to practice his English and asked if he could take me to the cave. He said first he had to fix his bike. We went to a scooter garage and he borrowed a screwdriver to fix his bike.
He took me to the cave but told me he wanted to show me a small one before I went in the big one. At this point he had convinced a Japanese guy to join us, so I agreed. After he slipped and fell in the small cave which was narrow, dark and full of garbage I expressed my wish to see the big cave. He agreed and we headed to the cave. The cave was well lit in the beginning. Once the lights disappeared the Laos man pulled out a little flash light and led us into the darkness. His light kept getting dimmer and dimmer. He fiddled with it but failed to improve the situation. It was as black as black gets in there. The Japanese guy said he wanted to go back to the lit path so we returned.
We stopped for a drink after the cave, the Japanese guy paid for the Laos man. At this point I noticed the Laos man lift his left hand onto the table, he only had use of one hand. He had been a glass worker before but could no longer work after he had an accident. After the drinks the Japanese guy set off alone; the Laos man and I started riding back to town. On the way he the Laos man offered to take me to a market and his home. At first I said no but he eventually convinced me. I'm glad he did. I gave him some money at the market because he said he was hungry. The market was a proper Laos grocery market. A man approached me and spoke to me in French. I did my best to communicate with him.
After the market we went to his home where I met his brother, mother, father, grand daughter, chickens, puppies and pig. He gave me his address and asked that I come to visit him if I return. I agreed.
After Vang Vieng I left for Luang Prabang. There were some wat, a palace, and late night bowling there. I wanted to go a little further north to a secluded place I read about in Lonely Planet. Sadly I was informed that since my lonely planet was published, the place had become "wall to wall guest hosues." So I decided to pass and head south to Pakse where I am now.
Today I took a tour of the Bolaven Plateau with a motorcycle guide. It was a lousy tour but the guide was interesting. He told me he was married with children when he picked me up. He told me that because I asked him if the woman at my guest house he was flirting with was his wife. Somewhere along the way we got a flat tire so we had to stop. We got off the bike and he asked a man where he could have it fixed. There was a place just up the road. The guide told me to walk there and that he would drive. I walked there and met up with him.
We started talking while the tire was being patched. He told me he had slept with 3 European woman but that last night a French girl had turned him down. The last girl he had been with was having her period at the time. He talked about sex constantly. After that we got going. I heard a waterfall. I couldn't see it because there was so much mist. Then it started poring rain which is not fun on a motorcycle. Then we saw a small waterfall after which we ate lunch. At lunch he joked that fish paste smells like women, and then smelled his fingers. Then we saw a coffee farm with no coffee beans (they're out of season).
Tomorrow I leave for 4,000 Islands.
