a life in words: good morning vietnam!

30th - 31st January 2012

Vientiane - Hanoi

After a peaceful detour down to the sleepy town of Savannakhet due to the unforeseen Tết celebrations (Vietnam New Year), I retraced my footsteps back up to Vientiane on the 29th to finally arrange the elusive Vietnam visa, as the embassy was due to reopen the following day. Checking back into the hostel I had stayed at previously, I came across several other travellers who had also been caught out by the embassies closure, as unbelievably no mention of it was apparently given on the Vietnamese consulate website! Still, such is the unpredictable nature of travelling and changed plans are part of the fun and the week long delay did allow me to get off the well worn "Luang Prabang -Vang Vieng-Vientiane" trail seeing a bit more of Laos and Savannakhet turned out to be a lot of fun with my new found Nordic friends. On the morning of the 30th, I set my alarm for 7am as I needed to get my passport and the princely sum of $55 down to the agency office who would be arranging my visa application for me. I debated whether or not to do it myself at the embassy, but for a $5 agency fee it seemed worth it to cut out the inevitable hassle of such procedures and to make sure it was done properly as I'm hopeless at filling in forms. It also cost slightly more because I needed it done the same day as I had already got my ticket for the 24 HOUR sleeper coach to Hanoi. The agency told me that the passport would be sorted by 4pm which made me slightly anxious as the coach was due to leave at 5pm, meaning that if something went wrong I would be up the proverbial creek without a chopstick but with no other options - staying yet another night in Vientiane wasn't one - I put my faith in Laos efficiency and hoped for the best.... With the passport, money and photo handed in the rest of the day was spent milling about the city - seem to have done that a lot in Vientiane - whiling away the hours without purpose until 4.30pm rolled round by which time my passport was worryingly nowhere to be seen. The man at the agency told me that I would get it back at the coach station before I got on the bus; a promise which was met with total scepticism on my part but I played along, crossing fingers and toes that it would all come together in time. At 5pm the minibus picked me up and it seemed I wasn't the only one cutting it fine with the visa, as the general topic of conversation amongst the other travellers in the bus - a motley crew of Canadians, Germans, Brits and a loud but friendly Pole named Pavel - went something along the lines of, "Where the bloody hell are our passports!?" Casual joking followed but an underlying sense of anxiousness had crept into increasingly uneasy smiles; an anxiousness which was thankfully relieved about ten minutes into the journey when the minibus came to a halt and a scooter pulled up alongside out of nowhere; the driver clutching a bundle of international passports, all of which contained the all important full page visa. Cue a huge sigh of relief. Pulling into the chaos of the main coach station of Vientiane, we filed off the minibus and made our way through the mass of weary looking tourists and exasperated looking locals who all surged on and off their respective buses bound for both national and international destinations. Initially unsure about which sleeper coach was ours, it soon became glaringly obvious as we were greeted by our very own self-appointed disco bus. Lit up like a Christmas tree in neon flashing lights, a garish sign displaying HANOI hung in the front windscreen of the coach which would become our home away from home for the following 24 hours....

As an introduction to the Vietnamese people, the two men who formed the effective crew on that flashing monstrosity did not make the best first impression, or second, or third for that matter, and their ruthless attitude towards us would not have been out of place in a POW camp from the Vietnam war. It became apparent that in their eyes, us foreigners were just cattle ready to be herded and prodded all the way to Hanoi. Inside the bus, three rows of bunk bed style sleeper compartments ran the entire length of the coach which were slightly too short for my long legs but one of the Canadians was topping 6ft7 so it could have been worse! These prison guards wanted all the foreigners to sit at the back of the bus, prodding and pushing anyone who tried to sit nearer the front, yelling brutal Vietnamese into those unsuspecting victims who had attempted it. The inside of the bus was just as flashy as the outside and when the speakers started blaring out a Vietnamese techno remix of Justin Bieber - which in itself was a form of torture that our guards would not turn off - we all wondered what the hell we had got ourselves into. Mercifully the lights stopped flashing and the thumping techno was turned down an hour into the ride which meant me could all try and get some sleep; the best way to get through long journeys. As the hours passed, I finally managed to slip off into unconsciousness as the dark countryside of Laos flashed by in obscurity. Reaching the border at about 7am, we were greeted by a decidedly miserable morning in Northern Vietnam as thick fog and heavy rain engulfed the mountainous Laos-Vietnam border crossing. Getting off the bus, the temperature had dropped considerably and we all made a dash to the immigration office which was lit up by the flicker of candlelight as the bad weather had triggered a power cut. Looking around, confused looking westerners in shorts, tank tops and flip flops huddled together, completely caught off guard by the bad weather while the immigration officers and locals no doubt mocked us from the warm confines of their thick coats, scarves and woolly hats. Waiting in the immigration office for about two hours we finally got our stamps and passports back and then began another fiasco as we had to walk for about fifteen minutes through the rain to get to our bus which for some unknown reason had driven off without us. Exiting the office I teamed up with the only person from the bus I could find, a girl by the name of Rachel from London, and together we set about figuring out where our bus had got to. It seemed it had driven off and parked about a km down the road and so the only option was to walk there through the dreary rain. Crossing a bridge which signaled the start of Vietnam, we headed off into the mist, unsure of where we were going as the thick fog made it impossible to see into the distance. As we ventured through the biting rain and dense mist we would occasionally come across other lost souls in beachwear, who joined our western convoy and after a miserable fifteen minutes we finally arrived at the bus drenched to the bone. Grinning border officials watched us as we passed by as if we were the butt of some joke that they put all new tourists through. Before setting off again on the road to the capital, I luckily had managed to quickly dig out some dry clothes from my bag beneath the bus as another nine hours sat on that coach in wet clothes would have ruined me. Although I don't think I would want to do it again the whole thing was actually a really good laugh, made more bearable by the little crew at the back of our coach who bonded together in the face of our Vietnamese oppressors. Twenty three hours after leaving Vientiane, we finally rolled into Hanoi station around 6pm, triumphant and victorious and all looking forward to an actual bed and warm shower.