4am we wake to get on the bus we have booked with 5 other people to get us to the border, 4 hours later the bus arrives and dumps us before hightailing it home to Phonsavan. 7 people at the Vietnam border thinking that once we cross all will be revealed and the way would be shown to us ? HA!!! The border has only been open a couple years and the road was still under construction (wet slippery clay to be exact) After some bartering with a guy in a land rover, trying to get him from $200 us down to $70 and then being booted out because we were too many we decided to pay the vulturous bike drivers to take us the 25kms into the border town (at a cost of $10 per person ? doesn�t sound like much but in comparison we paid $19 dollars for an open ended ticket from Hanoi to Saigon) The motor bike ride was amazing ? We went from 1400 metres to sea level in 1 hour (25 kms) ? Absolutely beautiful)
Once in the border town, we had to board a public bus at a cost of $20 per to take us to Hanoi. Have you ever seen what happens when you put 40 ? 50 people on a 22 passenger bus? It�s not pretty, especially after 7 hours! A woman on my lap playing with Kite�s hair and all sorts of other gems rode with us to Vinh. Once in Vinh the locals piled out and the bus was ours to Hanoi ? Hallelujah!! But short lived, they pulled over after 3 mins and pawned us all off on another bus (with just enough seats for the 7 of us, sort of)
All said and done we finally arrived in Hanoi at 2:30 in the morning , actually we were outside of Hanoi 5 kms, now to track down and barter with a taxi to get us to the guest house (that was closed for the night)
All said and done, we made it to Hanoi for the next leg of our adventure?
I�d like to interject and point something out ? When you travel you tend to reflect a lot and see things from a different perspective. Canadians in general tend to knock Americans? After spending time in another country you realize that there are assholes in every nation (except Ireland ? they rock!!) We�ve witnessed embarrassing and downright rude behaviour from almost every country and yet we have met some absolutely fantastic people from all countries as well ? Makes you think?
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