Some Bumps Along the Way to Vietnam

We expected the 24 hour bus ride to Hanoi, Vietnam to be boring, long and uneventful. It was definitely long and boring, but certainly not uneventful.

The day we left Vientiane, I woke up with a touch of the flu. My head was about to explode, my body was achey, and my tummy was less than cooperative. The problem when you're travelling is that you just can't crawl into bed. Heck, you can't even make yourself a piece of toast. I managed to find a restaurant on the Mekong river with pillows that let you sprawl all over the ground. I ordered a mango juice and basically camped there for the day, reading and sleeping.

Hopping on a bus feeling this way was not a prospect I enjoyed. But what can you do? At 7:00pm we left. It was a bumpy ride until we stopped at 1:30am. Why weren't we moving?

Some Vietnamese guy who speaks English explained that customs in Vietnam didn't open until 7:00am, so we were camping here for the night.

Now this made no sense to us. Why wouldn't we have just left hours later and been spared the additional hours on a stagnant bus? You cannot get explanations to questions likes these in countries like these, so we accepted it and attempted to find the beds the Vietnamese guy told us we could buy for a dollar at this rest stop.

We know better than to buy rooms without looking first. Maybe it was the fatigue, maybe it was the bus fumes, but be agreed to the dollar rooms and almost keeled over when we walked in.

I mean, we've slept in some bad places, but nothing topped this. It was a cement room with a cement floor and no roof really- you could hear everything going on outside. The bed was basically a cement block with a sheet on it. Once again beds were in short supply, so we had 3 to a bed. To call it "uncomfortable" would have been giving it more praise then it was worth. We didn't dare put our faces on the pillows, so did up our hoodies to sleep on them instead. To top it off, the roosters started crowing (my new pet peeve is crowing roosters. I thought they were supposed to crow at sunset, but here they go nuts in the middle of the night! I want to shoot them!) and there were some vicious stray dog fights going for hours. The yelping, wincing and barking was enough to drive anyone batty.

But time always passes, even in circumstances like these, and at 6am we drove to Vietnamese customs.

Just to let you know, Vietnam is one of rare countries where you need a VISA before you arrive. We all had this taken care of.

But Kevin's VISA -- which was issued around the same time as Dana, Ben, and Meaghan's in Bangkok -- said that the admission date was December 12, 2007. It was December 11.

We were nervous about this. Maybe it would be okay.

Customs was a gong show. The Vietnamese were very pushy and it was a free for all of shouting and showing their passports at the windows. We went to the window labelled, "Door for Foreigners" and handed the mean-looking, communist, non-English speaking men our passports.

And waited.

And waited. And waited.

An hour later, we were nervous. What could possibly be wrong? During this time, we sat on a bench. We saw a customs guy hoark on the floor, and then give Meaghan shit for having her feet on the seat.

Finally we realized what was wrong as we saw a generator and a cord going to the "Door for Foreigners" window. The power had gone out at customs and they couldn't process the passports! They were just recording the Vietnamese ones in a book by hand, but I guess that wasn't good enough for us.

I swear the generator ran out of gas at one point, because it stopped and took another half hour to get going again. But we did finally get called to the window. Our passports were stamped.

But Kevin was told that his VISA was not valid and he could not get in.

"Please," he pleaded. "They made a mistake on it."

"Ten dollars," he said. (Gotta love corruption in political systems.)

"They'll do it for ten bucks," Kevin announced to us. That was a mistake. The customs officer did not like Kevin broadcasting this corruption and defiantly shook his head.

"No. You cannot come."

We're all getting nervous. We still had a 12 hour bus ride to the destination. We had exited from Laos. We were essentially in no man's land.

Kevin begged and pleaded. They ignored him.

Meaghan pleaded. "My husband!" She said. "Take all my money!" She begged as she threw a mixture of kip and dollars at him. He didn't even look at her.

She started to cry.

It didn't work. They begged and pleaded. Nothing.

Our stomaches were in knots. The bus driver came. "Hurry!" He said.

We would have to split the group. I mean, for 1 or 2 people to catch another ride to
Hanoi was one thing, but 5?

Meaghan was sobbing, Kevin was beyond frustated, and the bus driver was ushering us to the bus. We did the painful walk on--Dana, Ben and I--and left bawling Meaghan and Kevin behind, feeling nauseated, wondering how the heck this could be happening, wondering if we also should stay behind.

We got on the bus and felt sick. The driver was still behind us.

Five minutes later a tear stained Meaghan walked on, followed by a ticked off Kevin. The bus driver had worked some magic. The customs officer wrote "$30" on a piece of paper and let him on.

Phew.


So we did arrive in Hanoi. On one stop Meaghan was squatting in a bathroom (if you can call them that here) and a huge lizard jumped out at her from the top of the wall. She almost lost it.

Hanoi is nuts. We've never seeing driving so crazy, and the horns give New York City a run for their money-- even all night. It was another sleepless night as a result. Fortunately I had earplugs so therefore did not bear the brunt of this. Scooters are everywhere. It's dirty. Our hostel last night was only marginally better than the previous night's accommodations. Ok, it was way better, but still terrible. We've given up looking both ways before we cross the street, because the only way you'll get across is to close your eyes and hope the cars and scooters dodge you. I actually got my knuckles brushed by a scooter today and a bus marginally missed me at customs. When the bus driver saw how close he came to smoking me, his eyes grew big and his lips formed a big "Oh!" We're glad we've been to Hanoi, but we're moving on once again tomorrow.

Here's a very crude video of the streets of Hanoi. I know it's terrible, but I was walking.


There are beautiful parts of Vietnam and we're looking forward to heading there. Tomorrow we hit Halong Bay.