Zelma’s Trip

On the Thursday I went for a lovely Indian with Vaughan and Olly at Foodstore 45 or was that Foodshop 45? My details are great aren’t they. Anyway it was a lovely Indian place by the lake in Hanoi. In the evening I went to catch my bus to Vientiane, the capital of Laos. I had very mixed feelings about leaving Vietnam. Part of me thought that I really should get on my way and continue my travels while another really wanted to stay, particularly as I felt rather at home in Hanoi. I went to the place where I had booked my bus and the group were eventually congregated together, put in a mini-bus and taken to the bus station. We then got on one bus, were moved onto a "tourist bus" then moved back onto the original bus. It was most bizarre. There were probably around ten Western tourists on the bus. I sat next to a Nigerian guy who was in Vietnam for football trials by the name of Kingsley. He was leaving Vietnam due to his visa expiring which was the same reason as me.

Prior to the journey I had been warned by several people that both the journey (not a sleeper bus, bumpy roads etc) and the border were horrendous. It was, shall we say, an experience. The roads weren’t terrible but were very bumpy. Kingsley seemed to find this somewhat upsetting and kept shouting things like, "driver what are you doing?" (read in a Nigerian accent). I kept explaining that the driver did not actually make the road, however this did not seem to help particularly. The toilets (or lack of them in some cases) en route were also amusing. On a couple of occasions you had to just go by the roadside if you needed to and the other toilets were mostly very basic. At one place even the locals were gagging which means they were REALLY bad. See my cold does have one good use! There was also one toilet which we walked into and just saw a row of bums. I had often wondered what the bricks on the floor were for and evidently you put your feet on them and then just go on the floor!

Whilst we were driving I was half listening to a conversation between two English women and a local man from Laos. One of the women asked him, "So where did you learn English?". When he replied, "HMP Blakenhurst" they had my full attention. It transpired that he had gone to England and grown Cannabis plants just outside Birmingham before being caught and sentenced to two years. He obviously was in an English prison because when I asked him about Court he said he had a, "rubbish lawyer" and that his sentence was too harsh for the crime. He seemed relatively happy about the whole experience to the extent that he raved about how good the education in prison was. It was not the best advertisement for the English Criminal Justice System to be fair and to him it was basically a good way to make money, free lodgings and education and then coming home. He joked about recommending it to his friends; in all fairness, what do you say to that? I could go off on one here about deportation at point of sentence but I’ll leave that for now.

The border itself was much less eventful than the toilet stops and we all passed through without a hitch. They even stamped my passport for two months rather than the month visa I had paid for. They obviously liked the look of me and wanted me to stay in the country!

FInally, after a mission of a journey we arrived in Vientiane, 24 hours after leaving Hanoi! That’s a long time sat on a bumpy bus believe me. Although the bus was technically stationary for a good half of the journey. They even stopped overnight so that you could get off and sleep at the side of the road. Most considerate I thought!