November 12th, 2005 - the Drama of Getting to Vietnam
Wow! what a journey it was to get here!! 26hours it took in all....
it started a night or two ago... we were meant to get a bus at 7pm. So this mini-van picks us up for the 1/2 hour ride to the bus staion, which is nice enough. Only on the way we stop at one place and pick up 7 more people. So here we are, there is seating for 8 people in the back, and we have 13 people along with all our luggage. It was not a comfortable ride.
We get to the bus station and there are people everywhere, but no one who seems to speak english. Our driver tells us to get on this bus that eveyone is getting on, but it is heading to Hanoi, northern vietnam, and we are going to Hue, in central vietnam. We had no other choice. We figured if we ended up in Hanoi.. then we did, no big deal. (it turns out we changed buses at the border)
So the bus ride... was air con for the first 20 minutes, but after that it wasn't... we didn't really understand why it got turned off it was so hot. And it sucked for adrian because his seat didn't recline at all it was broken... (sucked for me too cause he made me take turns).
At about 3am we arrived at the border. But guess what! We have to wait for it to open until 8am! On a cramped bus! Adrian and I took my sleeping bag and went to lay outside beside the bus so we could actually lay down, but after sleeping for about 40mins it started to pour. Back on the bus we go.
Managed to sleep a little bit, and finally the border opened. What a mess!!!! There were about 4 bus loads of people and 2 counters open. The vietnamese people are sooooo pushy. No one lines up at all, they just shove and crowd, budge, it is unbelievable. Someone at home could not even imagine the chaos.
We were kind of skrewed. We had spent all our laos money, but it turned out u had to pay for ur stamps (both departure of laos stamp and entry to nam stamp) we were really lucky we had the sisters with us who had some cash left.
So we get out of laos, but what do u know we have to walk 1km to the vietnam side of the border in the pouring rain where we do it all over again. More shoving on the vietnam side, but this is where it got messy. The veitnamese don't really like westerners, so they did all the vietnamese peoples ones first. Finally, we got through, only Eddie's passport went through the wash so it was kind of damaged, and they wouldn't take it!! They thought it was fake and told him he couldn't enter nam with it!! At this point we are the last people there and the buses are about to leave. Eddie put on a sad face and "pretended" to cry cause he had no money to go back or nothing and the busses were leaving so they took it. Phew!! All this before 10am!
So we got on another bus towards Hue, it was 9:30am and we didn't arrive here until 7pm, totally exhausted. Not only that, but the bus dropped us off 20km out of town!! Hello!! Butwhen i bought a ticket to hue i wanted to go there not 20km out of town!!
We finally got into our room at about8:30 and went for food. (forgot to say that our lunch stop on the bus they couldn't speak english and served us this weird stuff that looked like dog or something, louise's meat still had hair on it)
Anyways! We made it here and that is all that matters!
it started a night or two ago... we were meant to get a bus at 7pm. So this mini-van picks us up for the 1/2 hour ride to the bus staion, which is nice enough. Only on the way we stop at one place and pick up 7 more people. So here we are, there is seating for 8 people in the back, and we have 13 people along with all our luggage. It was not a comfortable ride.
We get to the bus station and there are people everywhere, but no one who seems to speak english. Our driver tells us to get on this bus that eveyone is getting on, but it is heading to Hanoi, northern vietnam, and we are going to Hue, in central vietnam. We had no other choice. We figured if we ended up in Hanoi.. then we did, no big deal. (it turns out we changed buses at the border)
So the bus ride... was air con for the first 20 minutes, but after that it wasn't... we didn't really understand why it got turned off it was so hot. And it sucked for adrian because his seat didn't recline at all it was broken... (sucked for me too cause he made me take turns).
At about 3am we arrived at the border. But guess what! We have to wait for it to open until 8am! On a cramped bus! Adrian and I took my sleeping bag and went to lay outside beside the bus so we could actually lay down, but after sleeping for about 40mins it started to pour. Back on the bus we go.
Managed to sleep a little bit, and finally the border opened. What a mess!!!! There were about 4 bus loads of people and 2 counters open. The vietnamese people are sooooo pushy. No one lines up at all, they just shove and crowd, budge, it is unbelievable. Someone at home could not even imagine the chaos.
We were kind of skrewed. We had spent all our laos money, but it turned out u had to pay for ur stamps (both departure of laos stamp and entry to nam stamp) we were really lucky we had the sisters with us who had some cash left.
So we get out of laos, but what do u know we have to walk 1km to the vietnam side of the border in the pouring rain where we do it all over again. More shoving on the vietnam side, but this is where it got messy. The veitnamese don't really like westerners, so they did all the vietnamese peoples ones first. Finally, we got through, only Eddie's passport went through the wash so it was kind of damaged, and they wouldn't take it!! They thought it was fake and told him he couldn't enter nam with it!! At this point we are the last people there and the buses are about to leave. Eddie put on a sad face and "pretended" to cry cause he had no money to go back or nothing and the busses were leaving so they took it. Phew!! All this before 10am!
So we got on another bus towards Hue, it was 9:30am and we didn't arrive here until 7pm, totally exhausted. Not only that, but the bus dropped us off 20km out of town!! Hello!! Butwhen i bought a ticket to hue i wanted to go there not 20km out of town!!
We finally got into our room at about8:30 and went for food. (forgot to say that our lunch stop on the bus they couldn't speak english and served us this weird stuff that looked like dog or something, louise's meat still had hair on it)
Anyways! We made it here and that is all that matters!