When we arrived in Hue it was late at night, we checked into a hotel then went and got some dinner. Luckily we stumbled across Cafe on Thu Wheels, a place recommended in the guidebook for its motorbike tours. As we only had a day to see the city, we thought it would be a good way of doing it. We'd arranged a bike tour for the following day. Despite a early and rainy start we had a great day. Nikki rode on the back of the tour guide's bike and I had my own. Our awesome guide Duong took us to an old american bunker that overlooked Hamburger hill, a Japanese covered bridge, a temple where we got to see a ceremony, an Emporer's tomb and the pagoda at the citadel. As well as seeing the sights it was also a great way to see some of the countryside, including rice fields, water buffalo, duck farms, small villages among other stuff. During the afternoon we ran round arranging a bus across the Laos border through to Vientiane, after going on a tour of the DMZ. We had decided not to make the final part of the journey up to Hanoi, as people said it was similar to HCMC with less to see.
It was another early start to get the tour bus in the morning, where we saw a funeral procession, that was really colourful, and involved a lot of people throwing fake money around. We had arranged to be dropped off at a town on the way back called Dong Ha where we would then catch up with the sleeper bus that was coming from Hue through Dong Ha on its way to Vientiane hence saving us a few hours of pointless travel. We were told would definately go all the way through to Vientiane, we wouldn't have to change buses at any point. As we were among the last people to get picked up, we got some of the worst seats. Nikki ended up squashed up at the back of the bus wrestling for shoulder space between a nice german gay couple (who made room for me) and a selfish, annoying, retarded, rude australia couple who huffed and puffed whenever she sat down and dared to take up her seat space on the back row ann the woman who wittered on like a deranged guinea pig about stupid. I ended up on a fold out kitchen chair in the aisle for the duration of the 9 hour tour that would send me hurtling through the windscreen should we break suddenly.
The DMZ tour was a bit disappointing, we saw a place called the Rockpile (a big hill that stickes out of the flat ground where the americans had bars/pubs on top and watched out for the Vietcong) from a massive distance. They stopped at the side of the road and told us we could take photos of it. Then possibly the start of the Ho Chi Minh trail (scrub land and a small statue thing all in Laos lettering). We were then taken to an old airforce base with a really really biased take on all the photos ("the Americans fleeing from the strong Vietnamese troops" or "Vietnamese Heros, who bravely killed many Americans" etc. etc.) and some rusting tanks and planes in the surrounding area (also a coffee plantation which was quite cool). We got a 10 minute stop over at a monument for the war and looked at 'Minority Villages' as we sped by on the bus after being told to 'ready our cameras'. We were quite glad to get off at Dong Ha, leaving the now boiling hot bus and the people on it for their 3 hour trip back to Hue.
As Dong Ha isn't on the tourist trail we attracted more attention, but a lot more friendly than the kind we received in China. When buses stopped at the traffic lights next to us people leaned out waving and smiling. I had a guy wanting to try on my shoes as he found them comically big, and children came out to greet us as we walked down the street. We got on the sleeper bus - good start - at 7pmish after being left waiting in the cafe for 2 hours. As we were the last two to board the bus we ended up with possibly the tinyest bunks in then entire world - neither of us could lie flat or even comfortably - and managed to grab a few minutes sleep here and there while the bus propelled itself and maniac speeds (lifting us off the beds when it braked!) til about twenty to one in the morning when they shook just Nikki an me awake and kicked us off in the middle of nowhere and told us (by pointing and gesturing and repeatedly saying "one") to wait 1 hour for another bus. The place was a total dump; road side shack thing with 'toilets' (holes) completely full of bugs, bad smells and a pig sty behing the urinals. We were joined by two girls and a guy from Ireland who were also confused by their unscheduled tour after paying for a direct sleeper bus from Hoi An to Vientiane.
The other bus arrived (among loads of others just stopping at the shack for toilet breaks) an hour or 2 later and wouldn't let us get on for ages, even once they'd took our bags and worryingly put them up stairs not in the boot area. Then people seemed to come out of the cafe and climb on board. As we watched through the window we saw they seemed to be stepping up something as they went to their seats - and then we realised that all our luggage, as well as the other's, was stacked in the aisle and all the vietnamese passangers were climbing over our bags, walking across them to get to their seats! Then we were allowed to board... only to find there were NO spare seats (the drivers hadn't seemed to be able to do the maths on that one and were as surprised as us) so they got some small plastic stools and put them down the aisle at the front of the bus, where the luggage and boxes weren't, and made us sit on them, luckily a woman who was getting off soon gave Nikki her seat so I was sat in the aisle next to Nikki with the 3 Irish travellers sat in front of me... Oh dear God, we were not impressed, we had at least 17 hours to go and things weren't looking good. Luckily after about 2 hours or so (about 4/5am) some people got off and we all managed to get a seat and attempt to sleep with the awful driving and braking. At about 5.30 we pulled up and stopped at the side of the road to wait for the border crossing to open at 6.30... sleeping on a bus in the middle of no where.
We went through the border control at around 7.30am, getting a visa, shelling out lots of money and getting conned into paying to use the toilets for being Westeners.
then just 7 hours or so left to go and we were away, stopping at a fly infested shack cafe for 'lunch' (Nikki stayed hungry, I tried some) and then we were off, only to get dropped on the outskirts of the city and have to get a 'Sangthew', an open truck thing, the 13km into town and get dropped off randomly in the center to find that EVERYWHERE, literally (almost) everywhere is fully booked! We eventually got a room after trawelling round everywhere and other travellers giving us hints or suggesting places they'd left that morning and washed, fed and were dying for sleep despite it only being 8.30pm...
Despite the journey from hell we've been having a great time in Laos and will do another post in a couple of days to catch up.
Photos: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=87240&l=3da67&id=720640428
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