Crossing into Vietnam

On Tuesday the tenth, we got up at 5 in the morning. For an oilman like Gregg, that's not too early. But English teachers like me don't usually see the sunrise . . . unless we've been up all night long. Actually, it was hard for both of us to rise. But the bus to the border was leaving at 6:30 and we needed to be there earlier to get a seat. However, when we arrived at the bus station, we were not directed to a bus. We were directed to a truck. I can't pronounce the correct name, but it's a common form of transport here. It's a pick up with two benches in the back and a topper. The truck already looked full when we arrived and no one seemed real anxious to let us in, but we crawled in, and sat there with our back hunched over. The roof was too low for short me, let alone significantly taller Gregg. He was in agony shortly. His spot in the truck was not ideal earlier. On his right was a woman with a cold who kept blowing her nose on her dusty rose jacket. At one point, she blew a snot rocket which didn't make it outside the truck, but on the seat behind Gregg. On his other side was an ancient man smoking acrid cigarettes and periodically dredging up phlegm and spitting. As we wound through the mountains, the large water jugs in the middle started to roll around.

Eventually we stopped and were told to get out. It didn't look like a border crossing to us, but the little old ladies showed us what to do. The Lao border station is a row of wooden rooms full of uniformed men. They looked at our passports for quite some time and stamped us out of the country and pointed to the road to Nam. With all our packs on our backs, we started walking a gravel/chunky pavement road. Gregg stopped to help some old ladies with a cart of sticks while some young men sat smoking beside them. Chivalry is dead on the road between Laos and Vietnam, I guess. It was weird looking up at the mountains and the trees of Vietnam, knowing I would soon be in that country. Growing up, I never had any inclination to go to Asia and now it's where I've travelled the most. Weird.

The Vietnam border crossing was a series of bamboo huts. Despite the negative info we'd received, it turns out that the Na Meo border has been open to foreigners since April 2004 and hasn't been turning people back. We were quite glad to not redo the truck ride of the morning. We went around from hut to hut with papers and had some of our bags searched. An English speaking officer was delighted to give us some travel advice and sent us on our way.

Now the problem was getting to Hanoi. There is only one bus from the border every week. Since we didn't want to wait until Saturday for that one bus, we went into the village in search of some motorcyclists to haul us to another town - just like the nice border man counselled us. Some guys smoking a bong were excited to see us, and gave us some tea while they played with our sunglasses. The whole family came out to look at us. They overcharged us, but we couldn't argue because we had to get out of there if we wanted to make Hanoi that night. They strapped my pack to the back of an old motorcycle and precariously placed Gregg's in front of the driver of a new bike. And off we went down a windy road with no helmets. I snapped some pictures of the hills. Children on bicycles would smile and yell hello when they realized we were foreigners. Guys would holler to my driver when they saw his foreign female cargo. It was fun . . . until the bike started to stall. Gregg and his driver had disappeared and I was alone with my driver who took my water bottle, drank most of it and then poured the rest on the bike. We limped along a little further. Gregg's driver ditched Gregg and came back. It was a long stupid process. Towards the end, we switched drivers and realized that the problem was the driver, not the bike. My first driver didn't know how to downshift and drove over cautiously around the corners, honking and honking. I got upset because the border guy had told us the bus left at 1 and we were still several kilometers from Quan Son. It took us about two hours and twenty minutes to drive 53 kilometers.

But praise the Lord! The bus hadn't left yet. We offered the four dollars it should have cost, but the guy demanded twenty. We offered ten since we were desperate ( I don't think there were any guesthouses there.) The bus actually took off without us. But they stopped and let us in. I bonked my head crawling into the bus and then greedily drank the little bit of water we had left. Gregg did his best to keep me under control. All the guys sat backwards in their seats just to stare at us. I was so annoyed.

We named the greedy guy "Snake" because of his evil beady eyes. He's our first enemy of the trip and kept giving us the evil eye. During a break for coconut juice, he actually left the table when everyone else called us over and tried to make friends. We named his pal "Lizard" because he was creepy, but harmless. Lizard would crawl on top of the bus to secure luggage and they'd take off while he was still up there. He'd crawl down while the bus was moving. He's quite talented. They honk the horns all the time here to let people know they're coming. It seemed to go off every ten seconds.

When we were almost at Thanh Hoa where the land flattens out into rice fields bordered by spectacular cliffs, Snake stopped the bus and ran into a store where a policeman had parked his motorcycle. He came out with the policeman and we had to exit the bus and present our passports. Snake stood there beaming. We really think he was hoping we'd done something wrong. He was happy to scare us. The policeman was disinterested and I was quite eager for the bus ride to be over.

When we arrived in Thanh Hoa, we boarded a bus for Hanoi. It was luxuriously cool inside. There weren't many people and we each took two seats. But as we went, we picked up more and more people. We had our big packs with us and had to cram ourselves into one seat. We found out later that everyone else left their stuff in a storage compartment in the back, but no one told us about that.

It took another three and a half hours to go 130 kilometers. There is no freeway in Vietnam. Everyone has to slog away through the cities. We got dropped at a bus station and motorcycle drivers swarmed us like flies. After the morning's adventure, we had no interest in another ride. When we couldn't find a bus, we beat the drivers away and found refuge in a cab bound for the Old Quarter. We were both worn out and grumpy and not the best combination. Gregg was quick to declare, "I hate this place" as the driver dropped us off on a dirty dark street with hundreds of motorcycles swerving around us. I blew up at a girl trying to get us to stay at her guesthouse because I was sick of people in my face. Gregg was very diplomatic, and soothed over the situation. We did take a room from her, a great room and I did my best to apologize.

With the erratic schedule and the poor gourmet selection in Sam Neua, we had hardly eaten in two days. We tried to find something, but shops kept closing in our faces. We found some water and went to bed, enjoying the air conditioning and Cartoon Network and two big beds.

For Gregg's birthday, we slept in and actually ate lunch. We explored the area around Hoan Keim Lake and went into an old Catholic church and a temple. At an ATM, I took too long and it confiscated my card so I had to return a few hours later to get it. I felt a little stupid. We went shopping - there are tons and tons of shops here. Gregg talked to the parents on the phone, surprising them with the news we were in Hanoi. Then we ate at a pizza buffet and made up for the calories we'd missed in the previous days.

Today was more sightseeing and shopping. Tonight we'll go to Hanoi's famous water puppets. Gregg's not too excited about that. Tomorrow we take off for Ha Long Bay and Cat Ba Island. Right now, it sounds like paradise.