The roads in both Vietnam and Laos have been upgraded making travelling by car from Hanoi to Vientiane a pleasant trip. The biggest headache for travelling by car is the car. Getting transit papers for a car needs at least a month to complete. A bus ticket of 25 US$ is a solution for most passengers.

The distance from Hanoi to Vinh city is 310 km on the Road No. 1. The trip takes a little more than 5 hrs to complete.
From Vinh  to the border gate Cau Treo it takes almost 2 hrs driving for a distance of 150 km on the Road No. 8. The border gate is working from 7:30 to 17:00 with a lunch break from 11:00 to 13:00. Therefore leaving Vinh city early is recommended to reach the border gate before the lunch break.

The border pass is 1000 meters above the sea level. The procedures at the border gate are not fast. After Vietnam has combined the customs and arrival-departure forms into one, the procedures did not improve as expected but became more complicated because one should get two stamps from two doors on one form. However, 15 minutes in that remote area are nothing.

One can observe smuggling activities right at the no-man's land between Vietnamese gate and Lao gate. Porters carry Sony Wega 21" TVs, freezers, rice cookers, energy drink cans, sanitary ware... on their soulders accross a mountain from Laos to Vietnam. The goods go down the hill just 300m from Vietnamese customs office and no one comes there to stop it. Instead, from the border to Vinh city I saw five check points with police, border patrol and other anti-smuggling forces. They should be waiting for their share of smuggling profit rather than stopping it. I saw not less than 10 TVs being transported by motorbikes toward the road No. 1 in Vietnam. It's not much to blame the porters, it is the extremely high import duty and so called non-tarrif bariers that promote rampant smuggling.

The distance from the border gate to Vientiane is 450 km and takes 5-6 hrs. The first part is the continuation of road No. 8 to reach the road No. 13. There is a small town Lac Sao, 30 km from the border where passengers can have a lunch. From Lac Sao to the road 13 the road is curvy with at two significult passes. As soon as the car turns right to the road 13 along the Me Kong river, the speed can be around 100 km/hr.

November 2000