3 hours of being jammed into a friggin mini van is not my idea of a good time. After exhuming ourselves from the sardine can called a rickety old Mitsi van we hobbled up to the exit office from Vietnam. A bunch of locals kept on jumping in front of us to get served first, so we just mocked the heck out of them for doing so, which strangely they didnt like. Oh well...
After that we were told by a strange lady on a motor scooter wearing a bizzare tinsel hat type thing (which I couldnt stop looking at), told us the bus was waiting just on the other side of the border - 5 minutes walk or so. Also if we wanted to get rid of our 'worthless' Vietnamese currency, she could give us a 'generous' conversion rate. Call me cynical but I declined her generous offer and kept my money safe in the deepest pocket I could find.
After our 5 minute walk which ended up taking more like 40 minutes, we found a local bus which presumably was the bus in question. I swapped my currency at a healthy rate, after some fairly intense haggling, and we borded the bus.
We stopped from time to time to allow locals to sell us their food: chicken on a stick, eggs on a stick, fish on a stick, rice in a bag, cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes, blah blah blah....
We met a couple of great German guys by the name of Max and Phillipe. We got on so well we decided to stalk them all the way up the North through Laos.
Finally after starting from Hue - Vietnam in the morning, 10 hours later we arrived in Savanakhet - Laos. Chilled out.... quiet.... flat... nice... pretty good really after coming from the rat race.
We had dinner on the side of the road on tiny plastic chairs, and ate chicken, fish, meat etc which was grilled on the little BBQ's along the road.
The sunsets this close to the equator really are something, the sun goes blood red and gets rather large. We have never seen such sunsets in New Zealand.
To cut a long story short, Savanakhet, Tha Khaek, and Ventiane were pretty boring and not much to do - to be honest. However we only spent a couple of days migrating up through these towns and didnt dilly dally too much. However there was a pretty little place en route called Phonsi, where we spontaneously decided to stop and talk to the locals. They were so nice, friendly as heck, and invited us to some free water mellon, even though we tried to pay them. I think our arrival was the highlight of their day as heaps of kids came to play with us, the locals all sat around watching us eat and laughing at every mini gesture made. Later on we took a boat up to some little waterfalls which was beautiful - and took a refreshing swim in clear fresh water.
(Wynne) Also in Tha Khaek we went to a major annual Buddhist celebration which was rather bizzare. A bunch of buddhist monks sleeping on their mats under a 'lean to' type shelter, with about three main contempory music shows blaring out Laos top 10 music at the same time. Picture yourself at a major major carnival with all sorts of food and bumper car rides going on. I swear my ears took a mammoth assault during this evening. Women dancers doing a go go type routine which was strange since the Buddhist - Laos culture does not permit women to show their shoulders or knees and is very particular about things like holding hands and pecking in public - I am confused. Then a drunk dude came up and started buying food and drinks for us, which I didnt feel particularly comfortable about but was also rather amusing. Then he called over a girl, who started batting her eyelids at me - all very funny. We put a stop to it, and tried to ditch him, but he kept following us. I, being the slowest of the group ended up humouring him and walking with him, in an effort to quickly get away. Which I did, which was hard since he was trying to man handle me towards the Tuk Tuks. Goodness knows what kinds of hanky panky he had in mind. But it made me kinda freak so I turned around and sprinted off, with the help of our German friend Max who had come to save me.
Also a little tip Tha Khaek and Ventiane were insane places to find accommodation - there were no places available when we arrived, so you must book ahead if for some unknown reason you decide to stay in these two places.
