Vientiane to Hanoi

After Vang Vieng, I headed to Vientiane to prepare for my journey to Vietnam. Originally, I had wanted to get my Vietnam Visa in Vientiane and then travel slowly overland through NE Laos to Vietnam, visiting the Plain of Jars and some small Lao towns along the way. This, I was soon to discover, was not a real possibility. Apparently, traveling through rural NE Laos takes days in various buses, and then once you cross into Vietnam, there is essentially no reliable public transportation to Hanoi. I have patience for travel, but I'm not crazy, so I started looking into other options.

In Vientiane, I met up with another American, Dean, who Billy and I had met in Chaing Mai, Thailand. We set off to figure out the best way of getting from Laos to Vietnam and ultimately decided that the direct bus from Vientiane to Hanoi seemed like the most practical option. Since I'm not very good at sleeping on night-buses (or as I like to call them "awake all night buses"), we decided to break up the trip into 2 days: stopping in the city of Vinh on the Vietnamese side of the border for one night and then continuing on to the Hanoi the following day.

The bus was pretty much par for the course of SE Asia public bus travel: we were the only non-Lao or non-Vietnamese on the bus, there was a puppy strapped to the roof, boxes and cargo were everywhere (including in my legroom), and we passed other buses and cars while whipping around blind curves at breakneck speed. As anticipated, I slept about 2 hours during the whole night while Dean snoozed the ride away in a Valium-induced slumber.

The border crossing was pretty intense; Asian culture has a different mindset with respect to the concept of queueing, so the immigration checkpoint was more like a throw-your-passport-at-the-immigration-window mob scene. Fortunately, the Vietnamese officers were kind to us and only charged a nominal $1 "stamp fee" (read: bribe).

Vinh was quite the stark introduction to Vietnam. It's not a major tourist destination, so there aren't many hotels or restaurants, and nothing is in English. Fortunately, Lonely Planet has a section in the guidebook with some basic survival Vietnamese, and I know how to say "pho ga" (rice noodle soup with chicken), otherwise it would have been a miserable 24 hours. The following day, we hiked back to the bus station and hopped on a bus for the 7-hour ride to Hanoi. Again, no one spoke English and we were the only white people on a packed-to-the gills public bus. This saga was tiring, but definitely a blessing in disguise; it forced me to learn a little bit of the language, I had the chance to see an authentic Vietnamese city and travel with the locals as many tourists probably never do. That said, I was pretty happy when we got to Hanoi and I was able to order something other than "pho ga".

-Julia


French-style buildings in Vientiane


The market in Vientiane


Enjoying an iced coffee at the market


Checking out the entrance to one of Vientiane's temples


Laos' beautiful national temple


Crossing the border


The overnight bus


Flags in Vinh


My first friend in Vietnam was this little guy

For more photos, check out the photo link at the top of he blog