We made it to Vietnam

We made it to Vietnam the 23 hour bus ride wasn’t too bad at all. There was plenty of space on the bus (no livestock either) we spent from about 5.30pm til 1.30am.  I read my first book of my travels and knocked over “High Fidelity” during the first leg. Just as I finished, the bus pulled over. It was there that a Vietnamese guy who was really helpful told us we were at the border town and that the border opens at 8am and showed us upstairs and showed us our bedrooms. It was just a normal basic mattress and mozi net. Roy and I shared a room the two Swedes who we had chatted to had the other room and I’m guessing the non-farangs stayed downstairs.
We were woken up as to some fast talking Vietnamese woman who turned on a light upstairs (my initial reaction is “what the fuck is some one doing talking so loud in our guest house for”) the friendly guy advised us simply “we go now” and with in 30 seconds the bus driver was honking profusely hurrying every one up, never mind a quick freshen up or even a chance to go for a piss.
The border crossing was fairly standard show passport, give money, fill in forms, rinse, and repeat. We even had to stick out luggage through an airport style scanner. I have my serious doubts it was very effective as the guy manning the monitor was buttering his toast as my luggage went through, and the examination table has this massive big spider web stretched from the middle of the table onto the wall next to it.
So from about 9am until 6.30pm we sent getting from the border to Hanoi. I pulled out my laptop and me and Roy watch Motorcycle Diaries, it was a really good film, made me wanna do a bike mission again (only huge this time) , and also go to South America.
Compared with Laos, Vietnam is fucking busy, even the country side is packed. People here don’t have front yards, every square foot of space is growing some sort of crop. I had also forgotten what the air is like here, you can stare at the sun in the middle of the day it just looks like a orange full moon. I also had forgotten what a bunch of dodgy mother fuckers Vietnamese can be. The normal, “Free taxi to my guest house”, no we are meeting friends at this place, “OK I get mini bus for you to take you to your place”, 3 stops of “come see my guest house” or blatant lie of “OK this is your guest house”, it comes to fuck this we’ll just get out and walk.
But we finally made it, had a nice (but expensive) meal of Indian, and went out for a beer. It’s 11pm now so time for another beer, then we go explore the city a bit tomorrow then up to Ha Long Bay.
As usual I’ve bought a new sim card and chucked my old Laos one in the pile. My new Vietnamese phone number is +84915449586.
Tomorrow I’ll organize my photos a bit better and finalise my “Best of Thailand” and my “Best of Laos” collections.

Cheers
Will Cowan