Long Overdue

So, it has been quite a while since I last wrote, but in order to avoid as long an entry as previous occasions have warranted, I am going to break the last 3 weeks up into 3 entries. Sorry for the delay.

Sapa had been our home for something like 10 days when last I wrote. On our last day in town, we hiked a few miles up one of the roads in town and visited a couple hill tribe villages on the way. It was somewhat clear for the first time since we’d been there and the mountains rose a higher than I had expected when I’d only seen hints of them behind the constant clouds that shrouded them. Also, I took some sniper photos of people in town. Usually when you ask someone to take their picture, something which I normally do and would heartily recommend all visitors do, you get a kind of canned image, a posed picture in which surprisingly frequently you subject is flashing the peace sign. I wanted to get a couple natural shots of people just being people, doing their daily thing, whatever it may be. So, I sat on the balcony at the restaurant where the Vietnamese man had abused me at chess so ruthlessly and snapped pictures of people, unbeknownst to them.

When we finally left, we were ready. Unfortunately, our room must have been in close proximity to a slaughter house of some sort because 7 of the 10 nights spent there were interrupted by the blood stopping howls of pigs being butchered (only one on each occasion). There is no worse way to wake up than to the feverish screams and final death rattles of an animal being killed, not even waking to a rat caught in a trap flopping about your house. As a result, we were generally nervous when going to bed. So, we looked forward to uninterrupted nights of sleep starting on our night train back to Hanoi.

When we got back to Hanoi, we had a decision to make. We knew we were heading to Laos next, but where and how were as yet only speculative. Our original plan had been to cross at the newly opened border crossing in Tay Trang because we supposedly could reach it from Sapa, but as our visa was quickly running out (only 2 days left when we got to Hanoi) and we were unsure of whether or not the crossing was really open or just hear-say, we had returned to Hanoi. Our desire was to take a bus or train to Luang Prabang which is in the middle of Laos, and then follow the main road there down through Vang Vieng, on to Vientiane, right near the Thai border, and from there take a night train back to Bangkok. However, we were to learn that buses to Luang Prabang were much more expensive and took almost 8 hours longer than the ones to Vientiane, strange considering that Hanoi is much closer to Luang Prabang. We had to adjust. Our plan became the one we executed, which is this: we took the bus to Vientiane, took buses north and then flew to Bangkok. The flight was partly inspired by our desperation to rid ourselves of some of our baggage. We had started out from Bangkok with only daypacks, but had somehow purchased so much stuff that we now required 4 daypacks and a large plastic bag/valise. We would’ve liked to take the slow boat from Luang Prabang to Chiang Rai, in the north of Thailand, but the bags were becoming unbearable. It would’ve been much better had we taken our travel packs instead, but you only learn these things after it is too late I suppose.

We have had many homes on our journey - I would define anything that we spent a night on as a home. We have slept on planes, boats, trains and, far too frequently for my liking, buses. Our home for the 22 hour ordeal from Hanoi to Vientiane was neither lavish nor decrepit, and though we boarded with much trepidation, it served it purpose well enough. There were 2 unfortunate things about it. First, the wanton depraved inconsiderate derelict bastard sitting across from Hilary and I insisted on trying to sneak smokes throughout the night despite the bus drivers repeated announcements that there was to be no such behavior on the bus. Second, the bus, having left at 6 o’clock in the evening, arrived at the border at 3 a.m., a full 4 hours before the border opened. The only plausible explanation I can conceive of is that the majority of Vietnamese, lacking air-con, enjoy sleeping on buses. Certainly most are not tall, so perhaps the bus seats are more comfortable than the way I experience them. I don’t know. I don’t speak Vietnamese, so I could not ask anyone what the hell we were doing there 4 hours early when we could just as easily left Hanoi 4 hours later. I’m sure there’s some logic to it somewhere. Our early arrival did prove useful in spite of the lost sleep. Hilary and I met a German couple equally disgruntled by the early arrival and also traveling the same route as us. We ended up spending the next few weeks traveling with them. They’re great friends. I believe you make friends faster and form tighter bonds with people quicker when you meet them traveling. Long-term travel is fairly intense and thus your feelings are a little rawer, you relate to people a little more openly and without concern. I think that’s the reason you form friendships faster.

Anyhow, the border was easy enough, though we had a bit of a scare when we learned that Vietnamese money was not to leave the country. You see, the previous day in Hanoi we had stopped at a bank to take out 200,000 dong (about $12.50 usd) to last us until Laos. Hanoi has cheap black market DVDs for about $1 usd, and we wished to purchase a couple more (we had already gotten several). Several shops offered the entire run of Scrubs, all 6 seasons for less than $10. We fancied this a wise acquisition. Well, somehow Hilary became confused at the ATM and before we knew it, we were the proud owners of 2,000,000 dong. Much more than we wanted. We attempted a spending spree but things were just too damn cheap. The exchange rate back to usd was too bad to even consider, so we planned on trying to use it in Laos. Also, it was Sunday so no banks were open. So, there we were at the border with a lot more dong than one would want to simply give away. Thankfully there was a money exchange in the Vietnamese crossing building. We changed the dong to kip at who knows what rate and headed on.


This a picture of a butterfly.