actually, that title is a complete lie.
preface: mother, i figured you could just hear about it like everyone else, don't worry, julia's dad knew where we were and what was going on... and we're fine.
Now, finally to Hue, Vietnam, beaten and battered a 22 hours later.....
SO.... Julia and I bought tickets to our bus from a travel agency we used in Luang Prabang, with offces in Vientiane. We felt great about using them, as we had read about some scams being run with buses to Hanoi from Laos being sold from guesthouses. WELL....
Somehow Julia and I ended up on this *bleep* bus for 22 hours going from Vientiane, Laos to Hue, Vietnam. By *bleep*, I mean, I was (and Julia) the scaredest I've ever been before. there was mildew/mold/ants --- besides having ants all over us including our face, i picked them out of my eyelashes at least 3 times.
the bus smelled, there were no other westerners. no one on the bus spoke ANY english and the ONE nice guy and couldnt even read vietnamese for us to try and ask him things using our translation guide --- vietnamese is obviously a language you can easily butcher, since we tried to speak it.
we were at the border for over 6 hours... clearly they like new zealanders and.... accept americans.
this bus was most uncomfortable, unsafe, unhealthy thing ever -- they smoked on there, and MAYBE a window was open (I made sure mine was). the bus started leaking on julia so she sat with me.
to top all that up... they literally kicked us to the curb and threw our stuff out on the side of the road 17km from Hue. the bus was supposed to take us to the station in. they had dropped us off in front of a stand of motorbikes and two men took us into town -- after haggling the price down a bit.... again, scared because at one point julia and i couldnt see eachother. this was due to the fact that a van almost ran us off the road and someone in oncoming traffic wiped out and almost came over into our lane. OH, there were lanes actually, since apparently the vietnamese drive where they please and just honk their horns a lot. a lot is an understatement. CONSTANTLY, is a better word.
NO CLUE how we actually ended up on a bus that CLEARLY wasn't for foreigners/tourists.
When we were taken to the station (with other backpackers going to other Vietnamese cities) we were put, including our luggage on one bus. it looked very full. before we could get on, a guy came on and was yelling at Julia and I to get off that that we were on the wrong bus... well, we interpretted that. He moved us to the next bus over which was the bus we rode on. We highly contemplated giving up what we had paid and spending the night to wait out a nicer bus --- which would have cost us $75 (that's A LOT here) we decided to suck it up, agreeing it couldn't be THAT bad... and well, the other bus had just left. We were on our bus which left the station and 5 minutes down the road pulled over, for no apparent reason. Julia and I kept looking at each other, actually decided to stuff it, that we would get at tuk-tuk back to the guesthouse and wait out the night. we were grabbing our luggage, which was sitting (chained by us) on top of the food/whatever they were transporting behind our seats (half the bus). the other passengers saw what we were doing and yelled at us to sit down (well motioned...) the bus driver hopped back in and we started off. so much for getting off.
we made a stop for them all to eat dinner, the people at the place were very nice, but we had never felt so segregated and unwelcome.
anyway...we survived. i have bruises all over, plus being sore, tired, and WELL angry.
if we can make it through that, we can make it through anything..... and well.... no freaking way we will go through something like that again.
