Vietnam

So the grand plan was simple. Once a week one can catch a direct bus from Xam Neua all the way over the Nam Neo border and well into Vietnam to a town called Thanh Hoa. We had planned well to catch that very bus the Saturday morning, a day before New Years. From Thanh Hoa a connecting bus will take you 1.5 hours north to Ninh Binh or another 2 hours further to the capital city of Ha Noi. Our plan was to avoid the New Years crowds in Ha Noi and head for Ninh Binh...

After a fast departure and a tedious process of getting over the Vietnam border (a new and much better border crossing should be operational there about 2 weeks from when we crossed) we stopped for lunch in a nowhere Vietnam border town. While the other travellers searched for something edible, Johan searched for Dong (Vietnamese currency). Janine spotted a pharmacy. There was a drinking get-together happening in the room at the back and before we knew it Johan had been carried inside. By the time Janine had finished purchasing her Vit C, Johan had already thrown back a tot or two of their local whiskey (or whatever it was) and was eating tiny whole crabs - much to the delight of the drunk Vietnamese crowd entertaining him. One particular gentleman associate with this group proved particularly difficult to shake later.

After a really long wait a border official came to inform us that our bus was being turned back to Laos and that we would have to catch another bus heading to Ha Noi. After a bit of confusion and an astonishing partial refund we were on our first shoddy local Vietnamese bus (along with the same drunk guys from earlier) full of rice bags and other cargo. After a big fight over price (the English-speaking border official had to be called back to end the dispute) the two of us and the 5 other travellers in the same predicament settled in for our harrowing high-speed bus journey to Ha Noi.

Locals seem to love to smoke and they do it liberally in the bus. A new thing for us was the huge bamboo (about 80cm long and about 5cm in diameter) pipe filled with tobacco that they pass around. About 7 hours or so later we arrived in Thanh Hoa (where we were meant to arrive about 5 hours earlier than what we did). Our bus driver thought it not worth his while to continue all the way to Ha Noi with just the 7 of us (just travellers remaining!) so he put us on a smaller bus rocketing in that direction. All in all we thoroughly enjoyed our time with the other travellers we met that day - great people and some great chats. All worth it!

At around 10:30 pm we were dropped off in Ninh Binh and bid our fellow travellers farewell. We were well rewarded for the days trouble with a super amazing huge room in Thanh Thuy's Guesthouse with a fantastic bathroom and, yes please, a bath! All this for only US$15.

Culture shock: People smoke on busses - not just cigarettes, but also with huge bamboo pipes. Locals are much more loud than the softspoken Lao people.