Vietnam - Break for the Border

Within minutes of sauntering over no-man's land between the end of Laos and the beginning of Vietnam, it seemed dodgy. Only 8 of us crossed the Na Meaw border that day, and little did we know what a team we would later become. Like it or lump it, we were in for the ride together.

I remembered the final Laos signpost that read 'We wish you a safe trip', as we climbed like cattle into an ominous looking pickup truck, which got wrapped tight in tarpaulin with no peepholes. We would have taken the regular bus, but they only run once a week on Saturdays, and it was Monday, so we were stuck.

We felt like blindfolded prisoners, but the nice lady in the velvet suit and chinese hat promised she would take us to the nearest town where we could get a bus to Hanoi, and 50$ between 8 of us seemed about the right price. Since it was spitting, it didn't seem worth hanging around, and what other choice did we have, anyway? There was no accomodation, no buses, and not another soul in sight.

We felt safety in numbers, and we all assumed that someone else had checked out the town name and connecting bus timetables. After 1 month in Laos, where people do nice things and smile a lot, we were soft, and stupid, and we trusted the chinese lady. We eventually did turn up in a town, but when the tarpaulin was undone, our lady had been replaced by a gruff character with no sense of humour, no English and big scary muscles. He feigned no knowledge of the bus, would not tell us the name of the town we were in, and was surrounded by several other gruff characters, similar to him but steaming drunk with crazy eyes, having just emerged from their Monday afternoon karaoke rave that was going on in the big white building across the street.

"Where is the bus stop?" In reply, Mr. Scary shrugged his shoulders and puffed on a large smouldering bundle of tobacco leaves. "No bus, no money". He looked unconcerned. It was obvious that he was our only ticket out of this hellhole, and we needed his favour. After a significantly long staring match and some hopeless gesticulations, he shuffled off with his cronies, and we were left half-in, half out of the truck and confused on the pavement.

Eventually, we wondered where he'd gone, and when he'd return. We worried about being stranded in the dark. One of us wandered down the alley he'd gone into, and found him doing rice wine shooters in the lobby of a shambles of a building that could, with a bit of imagination, be a guesthouse.

Now with bloodshot eyes, he offered to take us to a.n.other town for a further 60$, where there 'might' be a bus. "Oh dear, you don't have enough money? You can stay at my friends guesthouse, the bank opens tomorrow morning." We unanimously agreed that not on our lives would we get back in the truck with him at the wheel, or set foot in their skanky 'hotel'. A large, drunken crowd of vietnamese that had encircled us was finding this raucously amusing.

"In the morning, my friend can take you to a place where you can get a bus to Hanoi for 300$". For all we knew, this 'place' might be a 5 minute walk away, and we did not like the direction of this negotiation. Were not parting with 300$ when the guidebook said 5$ should suffice. So we did what any terrified tourists at the end of their tether would do, and said, "No, thank-you, we'll be fine without you", and stalked off archly, without much of a clue about where we were going from, or to.

It didn't work. The whole town was in on the scam. Everyone had a friend with a minibus for hire, but "No, no public buses around here". So we sat and waited. There was an abortive attempt to eat, but the lazy owners of the filthy restaurants were content to snooze on their campbeds swatting flies, and didn't seem too eager to earn any money today, or any day, and their places were swarming scuttling things anyway.

Eventually, a 'bus' did arrive, going in our direction for 5$. I got on it with my bag, but outside there was confusion and shouting. Then all the colourful elderly tribeswomen got off the bus looking darkly at me. The bus crawled off around the corner. The women walked off in the same direction. Then got back on! Without us!

It was dark. We had been travelling since 5am. We were losing patience. I struck up a conversation with a girl recently returned from school. She was the only English speaker, and her father had earlier offered us a ride, all smiles, but then turned angry and demanded ransom money, like the others. "Why is everyone being like this," I wailed out loud, a little emotional by now. "Everyone we have spoken to today has been dishonest, unkind and unpleasant. How would your father feel if you were kidnapped and stranded with no money and no friends in a foreign country, with unsafe and unfair people laughing at you and being aggressive?"

Luckily, she was enjoying her status as sole English speaker, so she translated this to him, and his laughter subdued a little. She translated that the town beleived we were made of money, and felt that we should give it to them, because they had nothing. "You have a house, and a car, and friends. You have food to eat. We only have 5$ and a handful of sticky rice. You don't beleive me, look here!" I pulled a sorry ball of rice out and displayed it for all to see.

"We thought Vietnam would be more welcoming, and more beautiful than Laos, but maybe we were wrong. Maybe Laos people are nicer. Maybe we should go back to Laos, it is better there for us." Well! It turned out that although the older ones thought they needed our money more than we did, they couldn't bear the thought of being inferior to Laos, so after all this, they agreed to drive us for the normal price to the normal place. It had taken us ALL DAY to negotiate this and, exhausted, we connected to a train at 3am and arrived in Hanoi at 6am, 25 hours after setting foot in the country. It has been wonderful ever since.