12Mar06 Sun 1802 Laos, Vientianne

For those of you who aspire to cover Thailand-Cambodia-Vietnam-Laos, I strongly urge you to reconsider Laos.The trip from Vietnam to Laos is a living nightmare.Let me explain.First of all Laos Aviation is the only airline operating here, so to fly out of or into here is also not very safe, since Laos Aviation is still not certified from the last time I read.So it leaves the land route from either Thailand or Vietnam.




DO NOT take the Vietnam route. The route from Hue city just south of Vietnam is not what you imagine..From Hue, I sat crammed to my seat unable to move an inch from 8pm right up to 1am.Reaching Vinh city I thought things would turn for the better...but noone knew where the bus to Vientianne was and someone told me to wait till 7am.

Imagine my horror.


So in the end I ended up on a local bus to the border, stuffed with local people and all their wares.Just to describe, when I went up the bus, I saw 2 pairs of feet on my seat;at the headrest.Before we set off I met Shigeo san at the coffeeshop which served really weird stuff;I ordered eel porridge, which ended up tasting like unagi.



From there, Shigeo and I agreed that it was " Jin Nien no Chi goku" which means life in hell.Also Shigeo got conned of 5USD as the brother of the driver told him that he'd fix the visa (advance) problem for him; which turned out to be redundant. At 2am we set off for the border, which is Lao Bao pass. I didn't catch a wink on the bus, all hell broke loose there.People were also sitting on the floor.14USD. I'm going to strangle the guy at BInh Minh Hotel back in Hue.

We arrived barely alive at 0600hrs at the border, when the guards are still asleep. You see, Laos border points have a strict working hour of 7am to 5pm, after that if you want to pass it's not possible. Ok so at least they opened on time;at7 am all the locals crammed the counters, we cleared the 2 points in 2 hours or more.

The bus went to a dead slow at the mountain passes preceding the border. It was a Hyundai water cooled diesel system, far outdated and far too overloaded for its own good.I really was pissed when I saw the lady boss on the bus counting her 100usd bills.She must've profitted a ton from carrying passengers from travel agencies, locals and goods at the same time; at our expense.

The water cooled system required constant stops for cool-downs. There was no A/c and the temperature fluctuated from near 15 in the morning to 38 in the afternoon.There was no food, the only cafes they stopped by were really weird places which had parts of baby bears in jars. The closest edible stuff I saw was turtle eggs and goats intestines.Yummy.

Naturally I wanted some dry stuff and asked for jackfruit chips which the Laos owner happily decided to charge me 4 usd for it.Well he can F-off;all these added to my disdain for Laos, as I've never felt this much repulse and disgust for any of the places I've been in; given that I do have a propensity to tolerate some of the most dire situations.This must be as bad as it gets.

In the middle a lady wanted to get off with her wares, and the helpers?In the process broke her rice wine plastic canister.Soon we had rice wine flowing all over the bus and everything was swimming in it.The smell was pretty good though, and I'm sure the rapid alcohol evaporation helped to cool things down a bit.

But inside the bus it was hot from the arguments that ensued; a huge bicker-war came about, ending only when we reached Viennetiane.
We arrived there dehydrated hungry and shell shocked from the ridiculous laos religious customs vcd that they kept playing and playing on the bus; it was reminiscent of the civics education kinda footage, only worse.

At 1800 we thought our 23 hr bus ride had ended but it turned out that this fantastic bus service dropped me 10km away from the city.We took a 1usd tuk tuk to our guesthouse, and settled down. At night, I tried not to think about the heat and bathed and slept. There's only one thought in my mind now: to get out of Laos ASAP.