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After having celebrated New Year in Chiang Mai, we crossed the Mekong river into Laos at the Chiang Khong/Houei Sai (Huay Xai) border crossing. From where a two day boat ride down the Mekong river took us to the historic Laotian town of Luang Prabang. <br />

Laos and Vietnam

Odv
2006-04-13 20:10:12

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they will hold out a bamboo stick for you to hold on to so they can pull you in. Tubing here is a stressless experience. If you stayed long enough in Vang Vieng you could really wind down.

Vientiane, was somewhat disappointing after Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng, it has two or three things to see and do. We spent 1 day there, but you could see it all in one afternoon and quickly move on.

Vietnam
Our first impressions of Vietnam were terrible! It started with the overnight bus trip from Vientiane to Hué, which was sold as the "direct VIP" bus to Hué. It certainly was not a VIP bus. At around 01:00 at night the bus made a food stop, when we went back to the bus, everyone had mysteriously disappeared except us and some other foreigners.

At 06:00 they reappeared, apparently they had all gone sleeping somewhere and nobody told us anything! Nice. After crossing the border, our "direct" bus to Hué drove north towards Hanoi, which was the wrong direction for us. They intercepted a south-bound local bus, to which we had to change. That bus was of even worse quality.

When we finally approached Hué the bus stopped 6 kilometers short of our destination. They told us to get off and take a taxi from there. There was no taxi, so we refused to get off the bus. When a taxi finally did show up it asked 40 U.S. Dollars!!! Acting as if this was a perfectly normal price, they started to take our bags off the bus, but we held on to them, refusing to get off yet again.

After nearly a day in crappy buses we were not too happy about this situation and the way they were trying to take us for a ride. So we played it hard, telling them, that we had already paid for the bus ticket to Hué and if they felt that we needed to do part of that already paid for trip by taxi, it was for them to pay for the taxi.

After some arguing the bus continued to another turn off where they intercepted another taxi, ...