Yumi & Alex SE Asia trip: Vietnam (Sapa to Dien Bien- Laos boarder)

I was so out of it the whole ride, this day was practically erased from my memory. The whole night before I spent dicking around with IRS. Calling banks, calling IRS, calling banks again to figure out how to wire mula to IRS… finally finish the night with some research about hotel in Dien Bien for the next day. 4am I went to sleep and 7am Yumi woke me up… the whole day before we were hiking the mountains in the sun… What a tediously long day awaited me. 7:30 we got on a bus in Sapa and as always our seats, reserved and paid for were occupied. The people in our seats refused to move, and the driver and hotel staff spent 15 minutes talking to them until someone in the next row finally moved. From 7:30 to 16:30 I was zoning in and out between dreams and reality. The bus was on a road simply unimaginable to a western human. It was roughly 3 meters wide, intermittent asphalt, potholes with occasional boulders in a middle of the road, and 100+ meter drop on side. Yumi had anti puke medication, and while three of the Vietnamese on the bus were intermittently sticking their heads out of the window to puke their guts out, we were happily napping or observing the magnificent scenery.

… I and an Austrian guy were offered to earn some good will with the driver by helping to load excruciatingly heavy bags of something into the bus. It took 8 of us to lift the bags onto the roof and into the trunk. After that the two Vietnamese guys forced to move out of their seats to make space for us, stopped squeezing me, and I enjoyed the rest of the trip in marginally more comfort.

4:30-ish, before we even had a chance to park, people started sticking their heads in windows offering us (in two word vocabulary) to sleep in their hotel… After some wandering around we couldn’t find anything nice, so we hired a couple of bikes and went to one of the hotels on my list. It was a massive resort a few km away from the city, but the rooms were shit. Another minor mistake was giving them our passports, when we changed our minds about staying there, the guy VERY reluctantly gave our passports back. We found a nice hotel at $35 – a fortune considering all the people on the bus paid between $2 to $6/night.

今までバックパーッカー気取りだった私が本当のバックパッカーっていうものを知る旅の始まりとなりました。。。。

ベトナムを南から北に横断して、すでにラオスに近い位置にいる私達はそのままバスでラオス入りすることを決意。サパからハノイに戻って飛行機か観光バスでラオスに入国するのが普通らしいけど値段も高くなるし、そうなると１５時間寝台列車に乗ってハノイに戻らないといけない。。サパの旅行会社に聞いたらバスにも空きがあってとりあえず$１０でベトナム側の国境までいけることで朝７時半に出発！

道がかなり悪いと聞いていた私は、車酔いを避けるために、とりあえず前日から禁酒。睡眠をたくさん取り、朝食抜きと酔い止めでこの過酷になると思われる旅の準備。来たバスはこれ↓もちろん観光バスじゃなくて、普通のバンではありませんか。。。。しかも乗客の半分はベトナム人。とりあえず、私達と同じことを考える観光客もいるらしく、７人のヨーロッパ人観光客も。。。

かなり窮屈な状態でこのまま約１２時間。。。。舗装されてない山道をひたすら走り続けることとなりました。

ばったんばったんとにかく、道がひどくて縦ゆれ横揺れと上下のゆれが永遠に続く感じ。ベトナム人の乗客半分ですら酔って吐いているぐらい。。。

途中立ち寄った休憩所。トイレを聞くと建物の裏って言うから行ってみたけど、トイレらしきものは見当たらない。。。。つまり、その辺でしろってことでした。

そして、いつかこうなるだろうと乗客全員が思っていたことがやっぱり起こりました。ドロにはまり、他のバスに助けてもらうことに。。。