Intermission: The Epic Bloggers

G’day Everyone,

At the beginning it was relatively easy to keep our blog up to date, with long bus rides, train rides and evenings by the pool bar providing the hours required to write everything down. Eventually we started to lag behind like a online multiplayer on a slow internet connection. Meanwhile the events of each day seemed to become more grand and adventurous making each post longer. The blog’s intention was to keep our friends and family (Hello!) up to date with our adventures, but most importantly for us it was a medium for us to keep a travel journal so that we can remember, and even revisit through storytelling, the places we’ve been, the people we’ve met and the things that happened.

Looking back through the blog from time to time it already feels like the events of the first few posts happened in another lifetime. A short while into the blog the idea of publishing everything into a book for ourselves was mentioned to us, at the time it seemed a bit self indulgent, however as the blog grew and the adventures continued the idea of matching the posts to a collection of our photos and producing a full colour coffee table book started taking shape, then the shape grew larger and larger and we were all crushed under the weight of the book. Possibly.

At this point in time we are roughly four weeks behind and trying hard to play catch up. The problem has always been finding time to sit and write the blog. For the last month or so, finding any spare time is best spent doing as little as possible, like sleeping. Being on the road (holidays or not) for so long is physically and emotionally draining. We’ve spent the last week in Austria, where we had a fantastic time at Laura and Headley’s wedding, but decided that maybe we should let them have a break and some time to themselves, and seeing that as good advice decided to do the same for ourselves.

So here we are, deep in the south east of Austria staying in a homely self-contained apartment in an old farmhouse attached to the farm, in a place where not many non-German speakers (if any) have ever been before. The landscape littered with hills, forests, villages and churches and smothered in thick snow. You may read about it in a few weeks when the blog catches up. Our aim is to do as little as possible, and in this time we have been able to write a few blog posts, sort through photos and just relax in general.

The hard thing about writing the blog so long after the events you are writing about have taken place is remembering what actually happened. When you do arrive at the starting point for a new post the memory takes form chronologically with each event unfurling after the next. This is where the blog posts tend to become rather long, (and seem to be getting longer) as each event seems as important in the grand scheme of things as the next, whether they are or not. But we like to think that the small insignificant details add colour and flavour to the story, like red cordial in beer, it may not be the best idea but some people drink it.

So on that note, as we sit here by the heater in our little snow covered cabin in -3 degree temperatures, remembering events that took place in 35 degree tropical jungle. I’m going to have to ask you, as the reader to make a small allowance of us. Be patient with the frequency of our posts and their longwinded lengthiness. Remember that this blog is as much for us as it is for everyone else.

Thank you for following along with us, and please keep posting comments as it is really nice to hear your thoughts. For those of you who want, you can follow the blog by clicking ‘follow’ and providing an email, this will send the new posts straight to your email.

Your only other option is to just stop reading… Now.

Lots of love,
Drew and Prue Elmer

Slow Boat is Slow

After a cheap breakfast we headed towards the slow boat. We now had 170,000 kip and no time to go up to town to try the ATM again, so we had no way of getting money. Nervous yet? We tried to put it out of our minds so we could enjoy our boat ride. We walked down to the boats which were lined up with their noses resting on the sandy bank of the Mekong. The boat is about 30m long and about 3m wide and looks like a long hollow pencil. We found our names sitting on a piece of paper taped to a pair of car seats that had been welded to a frame and placed on one side of the boat. Comfort was a luxury on the slow boat, as most of the other passengers were sitting on wooden pews or on the floor. We were thankful we had booked direct the day before.

Cruising down the river was peaceful and beautiful. The engine of the boat roared loudly but unobtrusively, and after a while became no more than a background drone. In the morning the mist was thick and didn’t lift till nearly noon, giving the surrounding hills an eerie and mysterious quality (probably because we couldn‘t really see them). Unfortunately this also meant the sun was unable to contact us. So we were quite bloody cold. Although, as I write this blog post, sitting in a snow covered airport in Munich, the cold of the boat ride seems almost laughable compared to our 5am hike through the snow to the train this morning. By comparison, the Mekong boat trip was quite toasty, yet at the time it felt really cold to us.

Eventually the sun did break through the fog and the mists parted revealing more grand mountains covered in lush jungle rising straight from the riverbank to the skies. We trundled along past fishermen and fishing villages and it seemed that almost the entire river was used at some time as a local source of life, although the quality of life may have been something foreign to us. Arriving at a small village we unloaded a few goods and a couple of locals, a herd of local women approached our boat holding what looked like fried guinea pigs, rats and even a cat. A dog was shoved in a sack and thrown onto the front of the boat, while we listened to the yelp from the village as another dog was slaughtered for dinner. We put on our best disapproving faces and glared at the locals as our boat headed off again.

After watching what was probably our thirtieth gorgeous sunset (it’s a hard life) we drifted slowly into the tiny village of Pak Beng, our stop over point for the first night. Climbing up the steep sandy bank we dodged the usual locals holding flyers for their guesthouses and made way for the cheapest guest house listed in the Lonely Planet. Finding the guest house or first question was to ask if they had credit card facilities or if there was an ATM in town. The man laughed directly at us and explained that not only did the town not have ATMs but the power was all run by generator and there were no phone lines. We gave him 80,000 kip, which left us with 90,000 for dinner and breakfast.

Trying to arrange breakfast we were told we could also pay with Thai Baht. We actually had a little Baht left over in my backpack and we dumped the horde of coins and notes onto our bed and counted out roughly six dollars worth. I also had two American one dollar notes stashed in my wallet and with our remaining Laos Kip we had roughly US$19.00, a small fortune by South East Asian standards. We had two options, the first was to starve ourselves until we reached the border the next day so that we would at least have enough to stay somewhere if the border was closed and there were no ATMs. Our second option was to throw caution to the wind and find a restaurant for dinner and use our Baht to buy breakfast hoping that there would be an ATM in the next town.

We stuffed ourselves with 90,00 kip worth of delicious Indian food. There are lots of Indian restaurants in Laos, and finding one in a tiny little village like Pak Beng wasn’t too unusual. The town thrives on the nightly stop over of travellers riding the two day Mekong cruise. Note the word “Traveller” rather than “Tourist”, as the popular Mekong route from Thailand to Laos does not cater for tourist luxuries. Our second day, we too were without luxury, as our boat didn’t have any comfortable car chairs welded to a frame on the deck. We had wooden pews, whose back rest’s were to far forward so you had to constantly push back with your legs to stop yourself from falling forward. We pushed the pews to the side and laid on our Backpacks instead.

There are two ways to do the Mekong river tour, the option we chose was the two day “slow boat” trip, with a one night stopover and a less than certain time of arrival at the Laos border before it closes. The Laos immigration closes at 6pm and the slow boat was expected to arrive at 5:30pm giving us just enough time to get over the border to meet a bus bound for Chiang Mai on the Thai side of the border. We really wanted to get to Chiang Mai as quick as possible as we now only had a few days left until our flight to London. So needles to say we were hoping to arrive in time to cross the border and avoid spending a night at the border town of Huay Xai.

The other option was the one day “fast boat”, this is know as the kamikaze approach, several people are killed each year on these. Basically it is a speed boat, but it is more like a fat canoe with a V8 engine strapped to the back. Passengers on the boat are given mandatory life jackets and helmets to wear, then they huddle together with grimaced faces as the boat hammers down the river dodging rocks like Luke Skywalker dodges trees on his speeder bike on the Endor moon. While this may be the much faster option, the looks of horror of the faces of the victims speeding by us, or at least the ones brave enough to look up, let us know we’d made the better choice. Well at least the safer more scenic and peaceful choice.

There is probably a element of jaded conspiracy paranoia about the next part of this story. But the facts show a scam worthy of the Vietnamese. The border for Laos closes at 6pm, however the Thai side of the border is open until 8pm. Everyday the slow boat arrives full of people wanting to cross the border and yet the border closes early and at about the same time that most people would be arriving at the border. We pulled slowly up the river between Huay Xai in Laos on our right and Chiang Kong in Thailand on our left. We could see the Laos immigration on the bank, about a one minute swim from the boat, and we could see the pier for docking our boat. But we only watched the minute hand on our watches tick over.

We arrived at the pier at around 5:30pm, this left us 30 minutes to disembark, grab a Tuk-Tuk and get to the Border office, plenty of time. No, our boat shunted backwards and forward appearing to be having trouble docking. The previous night docking had been no problem as we had literally lined up a gap between two boats and rammed our way between them until we reached the shore. But when every minute counted our boat waited and did nothing. We started getting really agitated and we believed that it was because these slimy fuckers were getting a kickback from the local guesthouses. The same guesthouses who had their representatives waiting with flyers on the shore.

When it reached 6pm and it was apparent that there was no way we could cross the border and would therefore have to spend our money on a Guesthouse, the boat magically worked out how to dock, and with a simple manoeuvre we were hitched to the pier and clambering ff the boat, our blood boiling. We pushed past the guesthouse representatives and walked up the hill looking for the Tuk-Tuk that was supposed to collect us a part of our ticket price. By the time we reached the top of the hill we realised we were on our own and as we had no money we had to walk 20 minutes into town.

Thankfully in town we found an ATM that worked, and with our pockets once again lined with gold we found a guesthouse, checked on our pickup for the border crossing and bus to Chiang Mai, then headed out for dinner and a couple of drinks. In the bar we met a couple from England who it turned our had been staying in Vang Vieng at the same time as us and in the same Guesthouse as us. Even more coincidently they had partied with Beau and still owed Ollie money. But of course that wouldn’t mean anything unless you read the earlier blog. After a few drinks with some locals where one of us got very drunk and learnt a lot of swear words in the Laotian language, we crashed out for our last night in Laos.


All of the remaining photos for our South East Asian Leg are now up on Drew’s face book, we are still trying to catch up the blog and we’ll post a link to all of the photos after we finish the remaining blogs for Chiang Mai and Bangkok. We are in Austria at the moment were we celebrated a magical wedding night for Laura and Headley last night, and as we are both a bit seedy today we’ve finally had some time to stop and catch up.

The Monks.

With sad faces we headed out from Vang Vieng on another “VIP” bus. This one had fans too and at least Drew and I had a seat. We had a number of people saying it was a long and uneventful bus ride, but we had an amazing time. The bus wound through some amazing mountains that towered above the road and even though we were a long way up they were even taller. We wound our way up through the mountains past small villages perched on the sides of the narrow road. Some of the ones we went past had signs saying World Vision Australia or something similar. The beautiful green scenery moved and flowed and then flowed down into the valley that holds Luang Prabang.

Luang Prabang is a small town that has a long history which is strongly intertwined with the Buddhist faith. We arrived at the bus station and caught a group tuk-tuk into town. We found ourselves dropped in what we thought was the middle of nowhere. The street stretched for as far as we could see and there was almost no one around. All of us who jumped out spent a few minutes standing around trying to figure out where to go from here. Finally we mainly split up and after spotting a restaurant that we knew was on the main street we headed to where there seemed to be a market setting up.

We wound our way through the stalls and made for some hotels we had found in the Lonely Planet that sounded really nice. Sadly when we got to each we found that the room rates were around twice what the Lonely Planet had suggested. We were then directed off the main street to some more places a street or two back. Two streets back was the road that ran along the river and this sounded like a nice place to spend a few days we got some room rates and in the end these were even more expensive than the main street. Getting up to the hundreds of Australian Dollars. We stepped one street back to the middle road and found a range of midrange hotels. In the end we picked one on a cross street that cost about $20US but was one of the nicest hotels we’d stayed in so far.

It was late already and we decided to head to bed after grabbing some food. The next morning we got up to see arguably the most amazing and lovely cultural experience so far. The procession of the Monks in Luang Prabang has been happening for many many hundreds of years and probably more than that. The monks from each of the different Temples (of which there are heaps) walk in single file through the streets and are given food such as rice and in some cases fruit. This is how the monks are fed and they only eat two meals a day. So at the crack of dawn Drew and I stumbled downstairs and out onto the street to see several long lines of orange clad monks make there way along several of the roads.

Along each of the roads was a row of local ladies and men, both old and young. They sat on ratan mats with their feet tucked under them and in a practical fashion gave small handfuls of rice to the hundreds of monks that passed by them each morning, They sat back and chatted while waiting for the next temple’s group of monks to make it down their part of the street. After watching such an amazing thing we stumbled back to bed and (thanks to finally getting a comfy bed) we slept in very late. After waking and having breakfast we rented two very pink push bikes and went out for a ride around the town.

We rode all over the main part of the old town and made out way down to a funky new bar that had made it into the Lonely Planet before it was even finished. Utopia lives up to it’s name providing comfortable pillows and small tables so that you can lounge around and eat and drink in peace. It also comes complete with beautiful tropical garden and spectacular view of the river and mountains beyond. We spent a few hours chillin’ before heading back to drop off our bikes. They were great fun, though after 30 mins riding them back uphill we remembered why we loved motorbikes.

We wondered around the old town, had some dinner and after looking through the market started looking at the day tours available. We ended up deciding on doing something that was related to elephants again. We chose a provider that looked the most upstanding and non-dodgy of all of them and parted with a tidy sum so we could spend the day learning to be Mahouts. A Mahout is a person that works with elephants and the tour would include getting on and off and commanding the elephant all by ourselves. Drew and I organised to do it the next day.

We woke up and watched the Monks again and wandered up to the main street to see if it was any different there. This is where we were shocked to see people getting up close to the Monks and taking photo’s right up in their faces. It was a shocking and saddening thing. We couldn’t believe that people had such little respect for the culture and the people. We walked back down to our quiet little back street and sat and watched the ladies give out the last of their rice. We grabbed some breakfast and then were picked up for our tour.

We were taken out to a lovely site where the elephants were standing around with a huge group of tourists waiting to ride them. It was a long way from getting our own elephant for the entire day which is what we were promised. We made the best of it though and using the commands we were taught got the elephant to lift it’s leg up and push us up onto it’s back. Then using the voice commands we got it to take us for a small walk. We then waited and chatted with the others in our group. There were a few people from England and Australia including a mother and daughter, the mother was 84 and had kept having people say ‘but she’s still got all her own teeth’ to her.

They were all lovely and we climbed back on the elephants and headed out for a short trek through the jungle and along the river. We headed back and had lunch and then bathed our elephants in the river before they headed out to the jungle to forage for food with their Mahouts. We then headed upriver to a beautiful waterfall via a small speed boat. We all went swimming though the water was icy. Then after drying off we headed back down the river, half way down we actually ran out of petrol and after a brief flurry of hand signals with a local, a man came over and filled the boat back up. We headed back into town and found some dinner before crashing into bed after a very eventful day.

We again slept in the next day and missed both the Monks and the morning. After booking our slow boat up river the next day we decided just to wander around and chill out for the day. We ate at a lovely restaurant on the riverside and through the old town again. After walking up to the temple on a high peak in the middle of town with all the other tourists, we watched the sunset then we made our way down into the markets. We lined up with a bunch of freaked out backpackers and it was soon realised that something was seriously wrong.

The ATM was down and after trying several others and even a cash out option at a shop that used the same bank we realised that the biggest bank in Laos was down. NO CASH in a country without eftpos!!! I had just bought a lovely bag that took a large chunk of the small amount of cash we had left on us. We had no food and ended up having to eat noodles on the side of the road for 20,000 which works out to be about .80cents. In the end Drew got a small amount out of one of our cards but not enough to do much more than settle the bills at the hotel and leave us with about 200,000 Kip. We decided to head to bed, lest we spend more of that last lot of cash.

We woke up early again and after wash my hands carefully I headed downstairs to participate in the Monks procession. There are ladies that you can buy some rice off to give to some Monks along with the local. After negotiating hard I knelt down and participated in the ancient tradition. I placed rice and fruit in three different groups of Monks baskets we had a cheap breakfast and made our way down to the boats counting our last 190,000 Kip…

"Happy Place" - Part II

The next morning in Vang Vieng we awoke a little groggy and organised ourselves for the tour. Unfortunately I didn’t know that the shared bathroom on the right had a hot shower. But using the cold shower bathroom on the left woke me up pretty fast. Sitting to breakfast was a moment in itself. During the course of our typical eggs and baguette breakfast, I think I looked up at the view and said “look at that” with dumb astonishment no less than twenty five times. Really, it was that beautiful.

We were collected for the tour and dropped at the tour office where we met up with Rachael who gave a little embarrassed smile and we also met a Israeli guy called Yossi. As we waited to leave we wondered where the other five backpackers where. Eventually we were ushered onto a jumbo Tuk-Tuk with about 10 Thai tourists. Arriving at the first stop we were a little pissed off. We were told the maximum tour size was nine people and that our tour would be full of backpackers like us. Instead there were about 15 of us, the Thai tourists ignored us, the tour guides had to explain everything twice and we were told that we were already running late so we would have to wait before we could enter the caves.

After walking through a serene little village we arrived at the first cave, more of an opening in the rock and only about 10m deep. This cave was called Elephant cave due to a large stalactite that actually did look like an elephant, albeit the slightly smooth surface suggested that there may have been a little bit of human intervention in its formation. After a children’s folk story about the local myths, we walked through the local village to the opening of another cave. This was known as “Water Cave” and the cave opened like mouth with a small river running out of it’s dark depths.

We had to wait while another tour went into the cave and came out again, and sat outside the cave on the smooth river stones and tormented the local ducks by throwing pebbles to them. No matter how many times a duck realises you are throwing stones to it, it still tries to pick it up and eat it, this possibly why ducks never invented the wheel. Eventually it was our turn to go into the cave. Prue decided there was no way her claustrophobic self was going in and was more than happy to wait with the ducks. So Rachel, Yossi and I climbed into the tubes, grabbed the guide rope and hoisted our way into the darkness.

After turning the first corner the cave was pitch black, we had a battery pack hanging around our necks and a miners headlamp. The battery pack was a little worrying as the whole thing was regularly submerged in water, but there is no such thing as OH&S in South East Asia and luckily I found myself not electrocuted. Caving was fun, dark, cold and wet, but still fun. We pulled ourselves through the cave on a rope for the first part, then after reaching a shallow part we walked hunched over for a bit, got back into the tubes to paddle against the current until we reached the end of the cave where we did it all again in reverse.

Back outside in the sunshine we were fed lunch which included a baguette each. This time the ducks were most impressed to find the things we threw at them were actually edible. Then we walked back through the village to the river where the kayaks waited. The tour guide pulled aside the Thai tourists and in Thai he explained in great depth the absolute basics of how to kayak. After 15 minutes he finished and walked over to us and asked if we had ever Kayaked before, we all nodded, he told us to follow the guides and he motioned for us to get in a Kayak.

The Kayaking was nice, we couldn’t really go very fast because we had to keep stopping to wait for the Thai tourist to catch up, which meant about 30 seconds of paddling, followed by 3 mins of drifting or back paddling. There were some little rapids to add a bit of excitement. But really none of it mattered when you stopped and looked around you couldn’t help but be overwhelmed by the magnificent views. I’m probably banging on about the scenery a bit too much, but it is totally deserving of the praise. Eventually as we winded our way peacefully down the river for about 5kms, we slowly drifted towards the energetic sounds of a big phat throbbing subwoofer pumping away, we had arrived at “The Tubing”.

The setup is like something from Peter Pan, wooden platforms with rope swings and zip lines sprout from each side of the river launching screaming partiers high into the air before dropping them deep into the water. The platforms are covered with masses of drunken men and women, dancing like tribal warriors to the beat, in an epic orgy of hedonistic mayhem. The conservative nature of Laos people is forgotten in this place. We pulled our Kayaks up to the second platform and became almost instantly absorbed by the party atmosphere. After buying a beer from an eight year old boy I scrambled up the first rope swing tower and took the first of many high flying plunges into the river.

The Tubing place is a hell of a lot of fun. The tubes themselves are practically useless and can become a burden as they carry hefty fees for loosing them or returning them after a certain time. The entire place can easily be navigated by swimming around or walking. Most people never make it past the first bar, which is easily understandable as it is so much fun, there is no reason to go any further. By the time they do make it to the second bar they are usually shit faced. This was the condition we met the English couple from the night before in (Emma and Tim). Emma was so drunk that Tim couldn’t get her out of the tube, she was almost face down in the water, and eventually Tim decided it best to put her back in the tube and float home down the river.

Then we met Shaun and his girlfriend. Shaun was a typical bogan Aussie who had been deprived of Aussie contact, something we found strange considering the number of Aussies in Asia. Maybe the other Aussies were avoiding him. With a drunken slur Shaun threw his arm over my shoulder and asked me my name, he did this about five more times in the following hour that he decided we would be best friends and have a drink together. Every time I flew off the rope swing, Shaun would scramble up behind me. Shaun’s girlfriend was getting a bit worried as each time he went off the swing it took him longer and longer to get back up the river bank. Prue and Shaun’s girlfriend managed to talk each other into having a go on the swing, and flew off in tandem, squealing with joy.

I never did get to have that beer with Shaun, we all headed down to the last bar at the end of the river and as we got there we saw Shaun trying to get out of his tube, he was too drunk and couldn’t do it. Shaun’s girlfriend helped him back into the tube and they too floated home. At the last bar we caught up with the four UK girls from our nightmare bus ride and we partied until darkness started to set in. Prue and Rachael braved the gigantic slide and I flew from the biggest swing, getting so much air that I had time to look over at a guy on the bank who said “Whoa, that’s massive air bro!”, I replied with an even bigger splash.

After getting back to town we changed into dry clothes and met up with Rachael and Yossi again at the BBQ kebab place for dinner. Eventually we said our goodbyes and separated, Prue and I headed back to the Guest House to chill out. The town wasn’t as busy and wild as it had been the night before, I grabbed a couple of beers from the café and settled into the hammock with a book and sparked up a joint I had left over from the night before. After awhile my peaceful bliss was interrupted by a couple of American guys who were trying to get into the pants of a couple of Japanese girls, but they had some more pot so it wasn’t all bad.

Earlier in the night Prue had met a man outside the cabin who looked fairly geeky and in his late thirties, he didn‘t fit the mould of the backpacker crowd, in fact he stuck out like dog‘s balls. He was acting fairly nervous and freaking out about some unknown substance in his shake the previous day. When he wandered out to sit beside me on the balcony he was still sporting the same first impression. After a few polite introductory conversations the geeky man implied nervously that he wanted to get some “Marijuana” to calm himself down. I pointed him to the chilled out bar and explained the casual approach of ordering a beer. After an hour he hadn’t quite talked himself into it, and midnight was approaching, so I sighed, rolled out of the hammock, and offered to hold his hand.

Back at the chilled out bar again things were quite different, the place was quiet. I ordered two beers, two spliffs, pocketed one, gave the other to the geek and we sat down by the fire. The geeky guy sat uncomfortably and made obtuse observations rather than conversation. To make it worse, he didn’t pass the spliff, I didn’t mind, but a few of the hippy looking scruffians by the fire seemed to casually notice, especially after he had a few puffs and let it go out. When he got up to go to the toilet I found out that the hippy looking scruffians had been in Vang Vieng for eight days already. They looked like they had spent eight days going hard Vang Vieng style, their edges were frayed and they collectively stared at the fire, while staring through the fire, and probably well beyond.

One of the locals came over to the fire and motioned for us to stop smoking as it was nearing midnight. I tried to ask him if it had been much, much busier the night before or if it was my imagination. Language barriers struck me at a dead end, possibly because I had asked if it was “chocka block”, suddenly one of the hippy girls jumped to life and said “Chocka Block! Oh my god! Chockas!”. Apparently the poor little Kiwi hadn’t heard many colloquialisms of late, and was a little bit too excited by the use of “chocka block”. This made the geeky guy more nervous, possibly from not knowing what “chockas” meant so we returned to the Guest House, where I slunk back into the hammock.

Midnight in the hammock was another unique sensory experience, while the geeky guy and I exchanged puffs on his joint the sounds of the town blared on around us loudly. From our vantage point we could hear the bars of the island, with the two largest stereos playing their individual tracks, but from above the tracks blended together creating a messy hybrid song, like a B-grade remix. Then in an instant it was gone and there was no sound at all. The town was plunged again into silence and darkness. Then came the chaotic sounds of the crowds below. Rising from whispers to talking and then shouting, as if an imaginary force was slowly turning the master volume up.

The geeky guy found his relaxation in the peace and quiet and slinked off to bed, leaving me the rest of his joint, which I offered up to the American guys, who had failed to plant the finishing moves on the Japanese girls, who had also gone to bed. The American guys had arrived in Vang Vieng earlier that evening and arriving after dark had not seen any of the view. I spoke to them for a while, and took great pleasure in telling them they’d shit happy bricks in the morning when they see the view of the mountains. I didn’t see them in the morning, but I did see the view, again finding myself in dumbstruck awe while eating the typical omelette and baguette breakfast, pointing at the view and nudging Prue saying “look at that!”

We originally arrived in Vang Vieng after a spectacularly scenic bus ride. Two days later we were boarding the bus bound for Luang Prabang, another bus ride. This bus trip was heralded as one of the most hellish bus rides in Laos. We would have liked to have spent more time in Vang Vieng (I’d even consider applying for a Laos Citizenship and move there) but unfortunately our time restraints were still hitting us hard. So we pressed on to Luang Prabang on a bus that wasn’t at all hellish, unless you’d called it hellishly beautiful. We wound our way through more spectacular mountains, flying sideways around corners as usual. I suppose it is the corners people complain about, but mountains would be boring if the roads were straight.

“Happy” Place. - Part I

Hedonism, a word that promises so much. In Vang Vieng it delivers. “Heaven” might be a better word, “Utopia” or “Paradise” also fit the mould. Whatever word you use, in Vang Vieng I found my happy place, and I think my life was cut into two parts; before and after Vang Vieng.

There is a lot of things wrong with the place. Drunken backpackers stagger the streets wearing inappropriate clothing despite the signs that ask not to offend the locals. All of the bars show endless re-runs of “Friends” or “Family Guy” and if you ask for a beer at most bars, you are presented a second “happy” menu listing a varying cocktail of drugs from the humble joint of Weed to a Magic Mushroom milkshake or an Opium pancake. The bars have a 12am curfew, forcing drunk and drug fucked backpackers into the streets with no where to go and the guesthouse we chose from the book was at the very top of the hill on a long dirt road covered in sharp rocks and pot holes.

It can also be said that there is a lot right with Vang Vieng. The streets and bars are full of easy going backpackers with a collective mission of having a good time and making new friends. The bars are relaxed affairs, with cushions and coffee tables the only furnishings, TV and music to zone out to, and the bar serves and endless plethora of poisons to suit all tastes. Although the bars close at midnight the locals still pop their head out from the door of their stores offering sandwiches and perhaps a beer to keep the party fuelled well beyond the midnight hour. And as our guest house was at the top of the hill, setting a relaxed atmosphere away from the party sound, with an uninterrupted view of the breathtaking mountains.

I guess it is just a matter of perspective… Some people love Vang Vieng and rave about it to their fellow travellers while sporting the souvenir T-Shirt. Some people don’t like Vang Vieng, put off by the reckless behaviour of the intoxicated backpacker crowd who dominate the tourist demographic. Whichever side off the fence you sit on, one thing is certain; no one can deny the magnificent setting of Vang Vieng.

We travelled to Vang Vieng with the knowledge that it was a party town full of backpackers, we assumed there was a river as we had heard about the tubing. Tubing basically consists of jumping in an inflated inner tube and floating down a river from one bar to the next, getting pissed. Allegedly a few people die from tubing every now and then, but we all know alcohol and swimming is dangerous. Fun yes, but still dangerous. So it was a great surprise to approach Vang Vieng with a horizon filled with some of the most magnificent mountains South East Asia has to offer.

Vang Vieng is only a small town but packs enough punch to get a map marker. The town runs along the edge of peaceful river lined with Asian jungle at the foothills of the Sawtooth Mountains, a gigantic and rugged mountain range which is described as “rising up like the back of a Stegosaurus”. The natural setting is enhanced by the laid back style of the town, with bamboo and other wood the prominent building materials.

Our Guest House was built in this style. For 30,000 Dong ($3.75) we booked into a wooden cabin like room with no more than a double bed covered with a mozzie net, a power point and a light. We had a shared bathroom and a communal area with a hammock, some cushions and a couple of day beds around a coffee table. Below the cabins, an open air cafe led to a steep stairway down to a bamboo bridge across the river to bungalows. The bungalows were almost three times as much (still cheap) as the cabin room. But when we saw the view from the top of our hill -where our cabins and café were- we instantly knew we had picked the best spot in town.

After settling in we walked back down the hill grabbed a meal at a café overlooking the mountains and wandered through the main strip. We sussed out a few tour operators. With the mountains, river and nearby caves, Vang Vieng is an adventure haven offering rock climbing, hiking, mountain biking, kayaking, caving and so on. We wanted to get a bit more out of Vang Vieng than just renting an inner tube and heading to the river bars, so we booked a kayaking and caving tour for the next day. The tour would end up at the tubing place where we would be able to swing off rope swings, fly down zip lines and launch from a giant slide into the river. I was exited about the tubing place, what man doesn’t like jumping off shit into water?

Prue had made friends with a girl from Brisbane somewhere between Vientiane and Vang Vieng and we ran into her in front of the tour place. She also decided to book our tour, and the tour guide promised us a small tour with five other backpackers who had already booked, so it all sounded perfect. We also ran into the Russian couple (who were actually Finnish) from the morning’s wait for the bus, in case you wanted to know; they were well. To make things just that little bit more perfect we walked back to our guesthouse just in time for sunset. Prue wanted to get to her Bag and left me two thirds of the way up the hill at a really chilled out looking bar with a sunset view. I walked up to the bar and asked for a beer…

The bartender placed a beer on the bar and a small tin which he subtly gestured towards. Written on the tin was another secret “happy” menu listing a variety of drugs served in interesting ways. I ordered a joint and he motioned for me to smoke over by the fire where two other guys sat relaxing. The fire was pretty much the perfect place to sit, I’d assumed they asked me to smoke there to mask the smell of the joint as drugs are still illegal in Laos. Either way I had a lovely fire and a perfect view of the sunset falling directly between two mountains, while the river and jungle spread out across the foreground.

I sat down, put down my beer and pulled out the camera, a man to my left looked over at me and said in a drawling voice “the sun”. He seemed pretty wasted, and so did the guy to my right, who then joined the conversation by saying absolutely nothing at all. A short while later the sun had dropped below the horizon and so had my brain. Having not smoked a joint in a long time, I found myself feeling pretty out of it. As paranoia and insecurity surrounded me, I decided it was time to bail out and headed back to the guest house to find Prue.

Back at the guest house Prue was chilling out in the Cabin reading a book. I laid down and zoned out for a while feeling myself drifting off into a higher plain of existence where I reached a realisation that the length of our lives was completely determined by our willingness to ignore the possibility of stopping and everything and everyone was connected by a gigantic rolling ball of energy that rolled around talking about me behind my back while I pretended I couldn’t hear it until it was satisfied I wasn’t interesting enough to pay attention to. Thankfully after a while I needed a cigarette, so I braved the exterior of the cabin, walked out the front door and ran straight into a half naked man.

Beau was from a small town that Prue and I both forgot the name of, somewhere in country Victoria. He was travelling with a guy called Ollie who later became quite an enigma, we never met Ollie but people kept mentioning him as if everyone knew who he was. Ten days later in the border town of Chiang Kong on the edge of the Thai-Laos border we ran into a couple who not only knew Beau, but had been staying at the guest house around the same time as us, and still owed Ollie money. Prue heard Ollie shouting and carrying on later that night, but never spoke to him, and the reason for his shouting comes later in the story. But enough about Ollie.

Beau had managed to pull a sense of logic back into the frame with his earnest country smile and humour, we chatted for a long time with him standing half naked in the doorway and me sidestepping like a boxer trying not to be very interesting in case the giant rolling ball of energy started taking interest in me again. Luckily I managed to stay under the radar, although I think I confused both Beau and Prue when I asked who the people over there were that seemed to know everything that was going on. “What people?” was the reply.

We let Beau put some clothes on, stepped around a drunken Aussie in a hoodie that looked like he’d ordered from the “happy menu” a few too many times, and the three of us headed down to the main strip for dinner. Once we got to the main strip we seemed to reach a point where we were at the epicentre of the town and couldn’t decide where to go from there. For a long time we stood in the middle of the street talking to each other and random people as they passed us by. Such is the spirit of Vang Vieng where every one seems open and carefree, strangers make eye contact, say “hello” and stop to chat and no one seems to be judgmental. Well except the locals, who are always watching…like a giant rolling ball of energy.

Standing on the street we ran into two of the girls from the UK who were on our nightmare bus trip from Hanoi, they were still wet, covered in texta, half drunk and raving about the fun they’d had tubing. Right next to us was a restaurant with a BBQ out the front showcasing an array of kebabs. Decision for dinner made, we walked in to find the exception to the rule about the locals watching you; the waiters aren’t. Service was impossible and sometimes comical. People would stand up waving their arms around like the ground crew on a Air Craft Carrier only to be thoroughly ignored. We sat with another couple who were friends of Beau’s (and also knew Ollie) and enjoyed delicious kebabs.

After awhile Rachael (the girl from Brisbane that Prue had met somewhere between Vientiane and Vang Vieng) walked past and we invited her to sit with us, her friend happened to be sitting on the table next to us, but as her friend had met a guy a few weeks earlier, she wasn’t getting much entertainment out of the new couple. I say sitting at tables, but really it was just a coffee table with some cushions around it. The relaxed style of Vang Vieng. Beau seemed to take an instant fancy to Rachael, but then again he also took an instant fancy to Sarah one of the girls from the UK when we met on the street earlier. I guess he was just toey.

After awhile we headed of to a nearby bar on the next street, a place pumping with dance music and scantily clad backpackers, most of whom were still wet, covered in texta and half drunk. We ran into the four UK girls again, they were rat shit drunk by now and forced their bucket upon us. Buckets were possibly invented by a bartender who doesn’t like serving the same person twice in one night. Or ever again. Basically you take a small bucket like the type you’d build a sandcastle with, pour half a bottle of spirits, fill the rest with mixer and ice then throw in a handful of straws to be passed around communally. Needless to say Buckets get you drunk properly, and in South East Asia a bucket costs about the same as one mixed drink from a Melbourne nightclub.

We ordered more buckets and played some pool. But we lost interest along the way and recruited a British couple to help take turns having shots. Rachael met a French guy who gave her pool tips. Prue and I laughed our arses off watching Beau and the French Guy sizing each other up, and competing for her attention. While Beau sunk the black ball using his toes and the French guy looked like he’d gotten the upper hand, I finished off our third bucket and we realised that midnight curfew was approaching and headed off to the chilled out bar I’d visited earlier.

Returning to the scene of the crime I found the chilled out bar was not so chilled out anymore. The place was chocka block with people. I walked up to the bar and ordered another beer and perused the second menu. At the stoke of midnight the music and the lights were cut off instantly. The entire bar shifted from a mess of noise and revelry into a dark open area with a lot of people standing far too close to each other. It didn’t just hit our bar though. The entire town was plunged into dark silence. The island, the main strip and our rocky little road up the hill were now all dark and silent. Well, except for the murmur of the crowds, who had no idea were they were supposed to go next and had no intention of getting there in any hurry.

Beau and Rachael had disappeared, and I walked with Prue and the British girl we’d recruited for pool back up the hill to our guest house. Standing around out the front of our guest house Prue called it quits and went to bed while I met a crazy Frenchman and we decided to head back into the streets. The streets were full of likeminded people, who were intoxicated in some way and had no where to go. We headed to the island, but as we got to the bridge we were told the island was dead, so we hang around the street some more talking to random people at every shop.

The shops all close at midnight and the store owners cover the front of their shops with tarpaulin. But as you are standing around chatting, suddenly a local face will pop out between the gap in the tarp and say “Sandwich?”. Supposedly the curfew isn’t normally enforced, but as the South East Asian Games are on in Vientiane there is a bit more regulation on the rules. However the locals are always keen to make a dollar and will even offer a beer or two while you wait for the sandwich. It all reminded me of the 3am Souvlaki trips back home.

Eventually I found myself in the middle of town, talking shit to people I don’t remember. Somewhere here I found Beau and Rachael embracing each other while sitting in a gutter… Nice. I left them be and wandered up to the terrace of a guest house where a few people where chilling out with some stashed beers and a laptop playing iTunes. I can’t remember the Crazy French guy being there, in fact I cant remember the Crazy French guy. A couple days later in Luang Prabang I was approached on the street by a French guy and his girlfriend who spoke to me as if they knew me. I took a gamble and mentioned something about Vang Vieng. They walked away and I said to Prue “Some French guy just talked to me and I have no idea who the hell he was”. Prue concluded it must have been the Crazy Frenchman that I had disappeared into the streets with, I concluded that if I couldn‘t remember him, why did we think he was crazy?

The streets were thinning and the backpackers were eyeing the locals hanging around with great suspicion. There are a lot of warnings around town about being caught with drugs after midnight and the people on the terrace seemed to be getting a good dose of paranoia that iTunes is illegal too. I decided to bail again, and trekked the long rocky hill back to the guest house, looking back to make sure I wasn’t being followed by a suspicious local, or worse a gigantic rolling ball of energy.

At the guest house I found a guy asleep in the hammock. I found out later that this was Ollie. Ollie had gone nuts when he got home and realised that Beau had the key. This was the shouting that Prue had heard through the night. Eventually Ollie had given up and slept in the hammock, a smart move as Beau wouldn’t be getting home with their key until the early morning. Beau had hooked up with Rachael and gone back to hers. Over near the café I spotted a blonde guy with curly hair sitting on a chair shivering himself to sleep. He’d lost his key and was also locked out, I dragged him up onto the balcony of the cabins and put him on the day bed then threw a massive cushion on him. He muttered a nonsensical “thankyou” and passed out, I went to bed and passed out shortly after. Hoping my good deed wouldn’t attract any unnecessary attention from certain rolling balls of energy...

...To be continued...

Chapter 4: Purgatory.

We passed through Vietnamese immigration and found our self walking down a steep road flanked by mountains with a lovely creek at the bottom containing enough river stones to pave the garden footpaths of half a suburb. The Laos border was an easy going affair, we filled out a form, gave them the visa fee plus a $1 corruption fee for the stamp, and a passport photo and were waived on. Somewhere here I lost our two remaining photos and wondered if the next group crossing the border would have someone who looked exactly like us who could make use of them. Who knows, to Asians, us white folk all probably look the same anyway.

The cold morning air was still cold and morning air on the other side of the border and for breakfast at the border we warmed up with some Pho Bo (Beef Noodle Soup) and Deep Fried Banana, washed down with a hot coffee. Then we clambered back over the rice sacks and back packs and settled back into our seats for the second half of our bus ride from hell…

In Laos things started to improve dramatically. Sure we were still treated like second class citizens by the bus people, who yelled abusively at one of the girls from the UK when she asked if the blaring pop music could be turned down. And we were still crammed into the back of the bus as tight as a travel sleeping bag. Outside the bus however, the towns had turned into villages complete with woven roofs and thatched walls held together with bamboo. The roads were still windy, but despite the poverty the road quality had actually improved, a lot. The mountains towered above with massive rock faces that reminded us of the escarpments of Kakadu. But most importantly, as we stopped for a break in a roadside village the kids would wave at us and say “hello”, their parents would smile, and no one, not one person at all approached us trying to sell us something we didn’t want.

We finally arrived in Vientiane, capital of Laos, 22 hours after leaving Hanoi, capital of Vietnam. Tired and hungry we banded together and shared a Jumbo Tuk-Tuk into town from the bus station, which we haggled down to half the local price for all eight of us. The four Pommie girls wanted to go straight through to Vang Vieng and I happened by accident to find a minivan to take them there straight away. So we said goodbye to four of the girls we had shared the past day suffering with, and shortly after that we parted with the two French girls as we each headed to different hotels picked again from the book.

At precisely this moment Vientiane turned upside down on us. Reading the guidebook on the bus we learnt that Vientiane was playing host to the South East Asian Games. What we didn’t know was that it started the next day. For two hours we walked from Hotel to Hostel to Guest House, finding that not only had all of the prices gone through the roof, but everywhere was fully booked. Eventually we were far too tired to keep lugging our backpacks through the streets searching for a nice and cheap place. We paid $25 for a hotel room that wouldn’t have been worth $5 anywhere else in Asia.

To be fair on Vientiane we didn’t really give the place enough time to endear itself to us. Sure the people were lovely, fun loving and friendly, almost polar opposite to the rude and mercenary Vietnamese. That night Laos hosted the first soccer match of the SEA Games, unfortunately it was sold out, but the celebrations after they won carried long into the night. We ate dinner, walked through the markets and watched as Jumbo Tuk-Tuks arrived carrying people who were destined to walk the streets for hours looking for somewhere to sleep. About five hours after we arrived in the town we saw three guys we had spoken to when we first arrived, still searching for a place to stay.

So without allowing Vientiane to open it’s arms up to us, we booked a bus for the next morning to take us to Vang Vieng. We vowed to return to Laos and retired to our overpriced hotel for a reasonably early night. Prue originally planned to head to the Plain of Jars which we would have probably done after a one night stop-over in Vang Vieng. Unfortunately as we were (and still are) running very late from spending too long in Vietnam, Prue conceded that three days there and back wasn’t feasible in our tight schedule. So again we vowed to return to Laos.


We had heard of Vang Vieng being a place full of backpackers getting drunk and swimming on inner tubes. A few people had raved about the place and a few people had told us it wasn’t their scene, as it was between Vietiane and Luang Prabang we decided to break up the long trip with a well needed night out and headed there hesitantly the next morning on the bus. Another bloody bus.

When you book the VIP bus in Laos, we quickly learnt that you don’t necessarily get the VIP bus. We were picked up late and while we waited we chatted to a Russian couple (who were actually Finnish for some reason we called them Russian) that lived in Bangkok and had to holiday every sixty days so they could stay in Bangkok. Eventually we arrived at the bus in the last group, to find that the first people who arrived at the bus first had been waiting on the bus for the past hour. Learning this, we weren’t too upset that we waited an hour on the comfortable couches in front of our hotel.

As usual I waited beside the bus while I made sure our bags got on and I stepped onto the bus to find there were no seats. Prue was in the second row next to an Australian lady who’s husband and daughter sat in the front row. I had no row, nor seat. One of the bus guys pointed to “VIP bus” across the parking lot. A massive modern luxury coach with animated murals covering the sides and told me “one seat”. I pointed to the floor and smiled, not wanting to leave Prue alone on our 1980’s Shit-box bus. Our bus was the same price as the VIP bus we thought we were getting, and so did most of the people on our bus, who all stared longingly at the comfortable coach across the parking lot that had air-con. As our bus rolled out of the lot, I was ushered into the fold down seat next to the driver and was treated to a panoramic view for the next six hours.

Watching the oncoming traffic from the front seat, it was lucky our driver wasn’t Vietnamese, Cambodian or Thai. Laos travels at a much slower pace than the other three neighbours. Sure we spent some time narrowly missing oncoming trucks and buses on the wrong side of the road while winding around mountain passes. But the frequency in which it happened had become almost negligible, well except for the winding mountains which had increased in not only frequency, but also increased in grandness and splendour. Within two days in Laos we had already been treated to some of the most amazing scenery so far in our trip, and I had the best seat in the house.

As we rolled into Vang Vieng, we realised the real reason why people come here, sure the parties are a draw card, but the scenery just got even better. Stepping of the bus, I think I died that day...

Getting Out.

We arrived at the office for our bus trip to Vientiane, Laos at the punctual time of 4:45pm. The lady we bought our tickets from was upstairs cooking dinner in a cute apron and motioned for us to drop our bags and wait to be picked up by the “Bus”. Unfortunately the sleeping bus from Hanoi to Laos only leaves every Tuesday and Saturday. Our visa was due to expire on Tuesday so without enough time for comfort we had to take the Sunday night bus, which was advertised as a ‘seated bus’, would take about 22-25 hours and had no toilet onboard. With no other option but an expensive flight or overstaying our visa which allegedly means we can never return to Vietnam, “fuck it” we thought, and booked the bus.

While waiting for the Bus to pick us up I was approached by a girl out the front trying to sell fruit and offering me to have a photo taken holding her baskets balanced across her back like giant scales. Not wanting to part with anymore cash, for neither fruit nor the scam laced photo opportunity (of which we had been warned) I kindly declined and entered into the usual street side conversation. “Where you from?” “How old are you?” “Is that your girlfriend? Oh Wife! Do you have baby?” While talking to the girl, her older sister joined us and they were most amused to find I was the same age as her older sister.

The older sister made a comment in Vietnamese and the three of them (as we were now joined by her younger sister as well) started laughing. With a confused look I inquired to the girl what was funny. She told me her older sister said I was handsome, I thanked her, then she said asked if I wanted “boom boom” and pushed her sister saying “cheap cheap”. The two younger girls started belly laughing while the older sister went bright red and hid her head in embarrassment. We spoke and laughed with the sisters for a while longer while we waited for the “bus” to pick us up.

Eventually a very pushy man came to the store on a scooter and the lady in the cute apron ushered us to follow him around the corner where a “taxi” was waiting to take us to the bus. We strapped on our bags and followed behind him as he hurried us around the corner then stopped a little way past the corner and pointed us to his scooter and another scooter alongside. With massive backpacks strapped to our backs and again on our chests, we looked at him and said “No Way! Taxi, not scooter, Taxi!”. Again he motioned us toward the scooters with a hostile command. “Fuck that!” we told him and headed back around the corner to the office of the lady in the cute apron.

She tried to convince us the traffic was bad and a scooter would be quicker, but also conceded the pushy man had duped her and wanted to put us on a scooter to save himself a dollar or two. We told the lady that there was no way we were getting on a scooter and we had been waiting at the office since 4:45pm, it was now 5:15pm and would have had plenty of time to get to the bus had we left at the original specified time. She motioned us again to wait, and went in to call a taxi for us.

The girls were still out the front and we joked and laughed with them some more, especially as the lady in the cute apron’s husband came out to say “taxi coming”. After asking him an unanswered question the girls on he street belly laughed some more and the one who spoke English explained that he didn’t speak English, he had only been taught to say “Taxi coming” by his wife in the cute apron. The street girl was the only one of the sisters who spoke English and she spoke it very well. When I asked her how long she had been learning she replied that she had been teaching herself for two years just by talking to tourists.

We were pushed into the taxi by another grumpy man, this time the taxi driver who honked his horn and sped his way through the hectic Hanoi traffic occasionally muttering harshly into his mobile phone and continuing his ranting long after he had hung up the phone. Meanwhile in the back seat Prue and I crossed our fingers as our stomachs churned from nervousness at the infinite problems ahead if we missed our bus out of Vietnam. Eventually we turned into the bus station, were pulled hastily from the taxi and with a single finger flick pointed in the direction of our bus.

We found our bus, an outdated looking orange bus with Laos plates and flashing neon lights throbbing to the beat of techno pumping from inside. Stepping onto the bus we were angrily ushered by the pushy scooter driver from the office, who mumbled something about us ‘costing him lots of money’ while I mumbled something about him ‘getting the fuck outta my face before I snap‘. As we were pushed over the top of rice sacks in the aisles our bags were thrown into a pile at the back of the bus. Thankfully we had one reprise as we looked to our seats at the back and sighed relief (quite verbally) when we saw half a dozen western girls cramped onto the bus with us. At least we wouldn’t suffer alone.

The two girls in front of us let slip that they were pretending to sleep so that they wouldn’t be forced to move to another seat, and we felt sorry for the French girls next to us who were under the impression the trip would only take 14 hours. As we settled into the cramped bus with a sigh of relief mixed with two parts dread and a feeling that we were unwelcome, the bus pulled away at break neck speed to begin our 22 hour journey south to the Cau Treo border crossing with Laos then on to Vientiane.

After settling in and opening a book to read, the bus driver decided the lights would go off and our overhead lights were also left off. Meanwhile the air-con was on full throttle (as it usually is) and the cold added to the discomfort. Discomfort which was increased further as twice on the way out of town we stopped to pick up more Vietnamese passengers, who each had more luggage (or sacks/boxes of food) and eventually our bags piled up alongside our legs in the aisle, and as every chair was occupied the aisle filled with people too.

We stopped for dinner at a dodgy road side cafe้, where Prue decided to stick to boiled rice for safety and the toilet could only be reached by running under a small waterfall from a burst pipe above the door. The food was shit but we needed something for the unknown length of travel ahead, and I met a guy from another bus also heading to Laos and we compared comfort. His bus looked nicer, but had people on stools down the aisle.

Had we been psychic we could have pulled a trump card on him. Not only did more people get on our bus at the rest stop (which meant at least three people were sleeping in the aisle), not only did someone steal my blanket… But 30 minutes down the road, no more than five minutes after we were joking with the fellow western girls about the hellish start to our trip, the lingering smell of urine was slowly replaced by the smell of burning rubber.

Gradually the smell became stronger and the bus slowed to a stop, Prue and I sitting directly over the back wheel looked down and declared “Oh shit the bus is on fire!” Black smoke billowed from the wheel arch and one of the bus operators walked over and poured water onto it, satisfied we set off again…Well, we drove for at least five more minutes until they admitted the problem was serious and pulled over again.

As a straw mat was unrolled under the bus and the bus guys started pulling out tools and a torch. I seized the opportunity to have a cigarette and a pee. I grabbed the camera and stood at the back of the bus while I watched the bus guys bang away at something, then scratch their heads, then other bus we met at the rest stop pulled over and gave our bus guys a jack. After jacking up the tyre and a bit more random banging the driver jumped back on the bus and started spinning the back wheel at full revs. The tyre stopped instantly when he hit the brakes and again they seemed satisfied so I got back on the bus and we sped off into the night.

The benefit of night time meant we couldn’t see the road. But we could feel it. In the darkness it felt like we were hammering along like a roller coaster as we were thrown from one side to the other with every corner on a road that was only corners. Prue slept fairly soundly as did a few of the western girls. I Probably got an hours sleep and when I did wake up from a sleep (usually waking while flying sideways) I had a crook neck from the contortionist like position I was asleep in and couldn’t move my legs because they were stuck under the feet of one of the French girls.

It was freezing on the bus as they left the air con on full all night so I pilfered a bit of Prue’s blanket, threw my hoodie over my eyes and sat back in the chair and escaped to the Dark Side of the Moon on the iPod. Just after 4am the bus stopped at a road block and we got off to go to the toilet (the toilet stops are all just on the side of the road, girls at the back of the bus), walking back to the bus I noticed that the driver and the other bus guys had rolled out straw mats next to the bus, and were climbing into sleeping bags.

Without any explanation all the power was turned off on the bus, and we stood there wondering “what the hell is going on?”. We were being treated like shit by the bus guys, none of them spoke to us or explained anything and when they did tell us something it was always with hostility. Eventually we were able to get enough single word responses to figure out that we were at the Vietnam border, which did not open until 7am. It was freezing cold outside and not much better on the bus. But as the bus was no longer flying suicidally around corners, I managed get about two hours sleep.
At about 6:30am the boom gate to the border opened and we walked in to the border control to find that we still had to wait until 7am to proceed. As the bus people never spoke to us and conveniently ignored us whenever we asked questions we spent a fair amount of time standing around not knowing what we were supposed to do.

When the departure counter finally did open the angriest of the bus guys told us to give him our passports and asked for US$1. The girls were all a bit sceptical as we were so tired of being scammed for money, but after a bit of an argument we pretty much conceited that we would have to pay the dollar for the stamp. I changed the last of my Dong into Kip and as our stamped passports were handed back to us, we turned our back on Vietnam and walked through the door to “No Mans Land” down the road to Laos, where the second leg of our bus trip and the fourth chapter in our travels would begin…