The Long Journey to Hanoi - 11/17/11
In Phonsavan, we confirmed our suspicions that there is only one option to go to Hanoi. That is an 18 hour long sleeper bus that starts its course 7 hours earlier in Luang Prabang. From Yasha and Yulya we heard all about the horrors of this bus and were anticipating the trouble ahead. So we took the necessary precautions:
1. Packed food in case there wouldn't be any on the way
2. Yelled at the booking agent to make him assign us the seats. (From Yasha's description there were people who had to spend their time on the floor)
3. Mentally prepared ourselves for this journey
Since the bus starts in the evening in Luang Prabang, it is supposed to arrive in Phonsavan at 2 am. (Yes, that's *AM*). The booking agent told us to come to his agency at 1:30 am, where he would open the doors and wait with us while the bus arrived. When Levka asked him for his phone number so that we can call in case he doesn't arrive, or bus doesn't arrive or anything else goes wrong, he refused to give it to him saying that he will be there no matter what. (Mind you, that the tour agency is on the bottom floor of the building and the agent and his family live upstairs).
As planned we arrived at 1:30am only to find the doors locked. And knocking didn't help as the agent family slept peacefully upstairs. 2 am rolled around with no bus or agent anywhere in sight. We were not freaking out because Yasha told us that their bus stopped at Phonsavan only at 4 am and also there was another couple who booked with an agency directly next to ours. Their agent opened the door for them and they were waiting for the bus as well.
At 3 am our agent came down stairs in PJs to tell us that the bus is almost there. 30 minutes later it actually arrived.
The other couple got on first and us second. They went to the end of the bus only to be told that there are no seats there. We were walking behind them when the driver called us back and told us to sit in front. Apparently there was a local lady with a kid (we think a wife and child of the driver who were riding without a ticket) who freed up the seats for us. So we got practically the best seats in the house. The other couple were not so lucky and they spent the entire time on the floor. Oh and the fact that we had seats "assigned" didn't actually matter. Our seat numbers were 26 and 27 and it turned out that this bus doesn't have that many seats.
Now about the bus: The bus is supposed to be a sleeper. It has seats that are lifted about 1 m off the ground that unfold horizontally and they are long enough that you can kinda stretch your legs. (Taller people are less lucky in this respect). Also there are mattresses on the floor below each one of the seats and the unlucky people get to ride over there. The way that it is supposed to work, is that the tourists who pay a ton of money for this bus are supposed to have the seats. And the locals, who pay a little or nothing at all, are supposed to be on the floor. But it doesn't work that way.
So we got on the bus, got a great seat and were on the way! Sounds like we were set, but there were some clear downsides to the whole ride. The fact that the bus is called a "sleeper" is only known to the tourists who expect some peace and quiet. The drivers and staff are unaware of this notion. They talk, actually yell, at each other, blast the radio at random hours of the night and periodically sing songs. The most fun is when the bus stops at completely random places to pick up some friends of theirs. Then the "flight attendant" starts playing the game of Tetris where he yells at people on the floor about how they should move/fold their body so more people can fit into an already overflowing bus. And this lasts the entire trip.
To add to the excitement, our first driver was trigger happy when it came to the bus horn. Vietnamese are known to be able to navigate in crazy traffic and they do honk a lot to avoid collisions. But this guy took the honking to a new extreme. He honked at passing cars who were not in the way, at chickens and cows crossing the road, at kids on bikes on the side of the road and generally at anything that moved anywhere in the vicinity. We think he averaged about 15 beeps a minute.
At around 7 am we got to the Vietnamese border. All the locals jumped out of the bus and the foreigners were unsure what to do. Being in the front I started asking the driver about it. He yelled something to me in Vietnamese and pointed us out of the bus. So the whole crowd slowly piled out. And we ended up on a side of a road, with a few small mom & pop shops with strange food and no border anywhere. (BTW I asked one of the shop owners to use their toilet, she said "NO" and all the locals laughed in our faces. Yulya had a similar experience at the border a few days before.) Without much choice, we started walking straight on the road. In about 10 mins we reached a border. A small house with little windows behind which the officials are supposed to sit, but there were no officials. Turns out that the office is closed till 7:30. So we waited for a bit to get our Laos 'out' stamps. Then we walked across the border for another few minutes and reached the Vietnamese side.
There, all the passports were collected and we waited for another 40 mins or so to get them back. At the time the bus arrived with all our bags. We were told to unload them and go through a security check. The security consisted of a guy pretending to look inside a bag before waving you through. In my bag he lifted the top piece of clothing and he just stared at Levka's bag before deciding that it was too big to look at and waved him through. Not sure what the point was of this exercise. Anyway, about 3 hours later, we were on the way again.
The bus made several stops to let people out to buy food or use the toilet. The stops were becoming progressively worse on both fronts. The food was crappy and scarce. At one point we were able to buy Soup Pho for all of $0.70. Levka said that it was a lot better in CA. I think this is when he got nostalgic for the Pho Lunches in Mt. View. The rest of the time, the stops only offered beer, an occasional soda and maybe some chips. And the bathroom was reaching new lows. I'm already used to squat toilets and lack of toilet paper and running water. In this case the dirtiness levels were at new extremes. And the last bathroom was the "best", where the women's side had no partitions at all! The Vietnamese women had no issues with that. But the European women lined up to use the only available stall. The bus driver was shocked why there was a line when there was so much space inside and he was ready to leave.
I think the cultural differences are too great for either side to even comprehend. I think either side finds the other somewhat "barbaric". And if not barbaric then maybe uncultured, inappropriate, selfish and many other negative things.
So the ride dragged on in this way for about 22 hours. (4 hours longer than was promised). But we were kinda expecting that. We got more hungry and tired and annoyed with the situation. At one point in time, the "flight attendant" came to us carrying a small child in one hand. With the other hand, he moved Levka's legs a little to one side and then placed the child in the newly created space in our feet.
The child only sat there for 15 minutes before deciding that he would rather be with his mother and started to cry. They swiftly removed him and didn't return him. The kid was small and cute and we really didn't mind, we just couldn't understand this.
More annoyances came when we actually arrived to Hanoi. We were dropped off at a "New" Bus station instead of one of the regular ones that are really close to Old Town. This "new" bus station was nothing but a dirt road with no toilet or even a building. And there was only one guy who offered a mini van to take us directly to town. The ride only cost $3 for the both of us, which is nothing for us (but expensive by Vietnamese standard), but we know that it is another sort of scam to make an extra buck off the tourists. They even stopped by an ATM on the way to make sure that everyone could get money to pay for the ride.
The owners of the company brought us to their booking office / hotel and offered us to stay there. We looked at the rooms and they were unpleasant so we decided to walk around and find something better. Mind you that it was 12:30am when we started walking. At around that time all the cheaper hotels started to close down their doors. We were walking to a hotel recommended by the guidebook. After about an hour of not being able to find it, we realized that the book made a mistake and marked the hotel at a wrong spot. When we finally got to that hotel, the doors were tightly locked and we were SOL. At this point we were desperate to stay somewhere. Especially since we kept on being harassed by people on motorbikes who tried to take us to a hotel. Levka almost had to beat a guy in order for him to go away. In the end, we ended up staying at a Backpacker hostel which was on par, if not better, than any European hostel that we've been to.
At around 3 am we were happily in bed!
As you may have guessed, we are now exploring Hanoi, but we won't show you the pictures and videos until we write another post :)








