Laos – Konglor Cave and crossing into Vietnam

The bus trip from Vientiane, despite being informed that it was a four to five hour trip, was in fact seven hours. But we took it as a travel day and when we got to Konglor, after a road full of pot holes (that was reportedly a sealed road), we gladly went for a walk to stretch out our legs and explore the village. We got beyond the 2-D roadside view and descended into the village, seeing houses on stilts, children running around, ladies carrying chickens by their wings, and basically seeing people go about their daily lives outside of the city. And what a beautiful place to live. 

We woke up and went to the cave the first thing in the morning. First, a national park entrance fee. Then a cave entrance fee plus a boat fee. Fee after fee after fee…fairly typical. The cave was pretty incredible. It was the two of us and two guides drifting up on a wooden boat with a longtail boat motor. The boat descends into complete darkness broken only by four completely inadequate headlamps. The ceilings are ridged and covered with stalactites and a quite a few areas with water seeping down (which the boat deftly maneuvered past). And the inside is this bizarre place you wouldn’t imagine existed in the world. Many of the stalagmites and stalactites looked like mud coral, with one area in the cave illuminated by light so you can see what otherworldliness exists inside.  

It took about an hour to get through the 7.5 kilometer long cave and another hour back. After that, we bided our time until the bus out of town came around. Well, less of a bus and more of an open-backed truck. Two hours to the next transition point, then another two to three hours to Lak Sao, the border town where you can reportedly get a mini-van over the border and to Vinh in Vietnam.  

Lak Sao was a dusty, very non-touristy town. A sign up at the bus station was charging nearly three times the amount for a bus to Vinh as what the guide book says. (Seriously, we should just throw this damn thing at this point.) We walked to the tourist information office to see if they could enlighten us only to find that despite the English on the signs, the employees spoke zero English. They were really nice and seemed to be trying to help, but they were completely useless. There were no town maps, no information on guest houses and even less information about buses. We left there quickly to do our own recon. We found yet another horrible hotel room without windows and which we were afraid might have bed bugs (luckily there weren’t). We also tried searching for a restaurant, walked into a big open place with lots of chairs and tables, that was completely empty. We sat down for a drink at tables that had glass tops under which there were solid layers of dust underneath interrupted by the odd fingerprint near the edge. It was disgusting, and I’m pretty sure we had similar layers of dust on us by the time the day was over. We managed to find some sandwiches by the bus station from a man who gave us one price before we ordered than another afterward. We were feeling pretty tetchy and decided to barricade ourselves from the horrible town in the horrible room. 

The next day we woke up and I was determined it would be a good day. I was wrong. Very wrong. We showed up an hour and a half early to catch the bus from the bus station, which was lucky since the bus left early! They proceeded to overcharge us then cram us into a bus that was already overflowing with boxes (a few of which were themselves overflowing with chickens—that and a plastic bag with a bunch of stuff including a chicken). We fit ourselves into the seat and hunkered in for a long squishy ride. 

The bus left the station then spent the next hour or so driving through town picking people up from various locations. Waiting. Honking the horn every minute to alert everyone to the fact it was leaving town. And the people that got on were loud and spent the entire trip chatting amongst themselves. A husband and wife having a domestic up front for a while, him putting her in a headlock. All in a day’s work right? We put in headphones and tried to drown out the clatter, though it wasn’t necessarily effective.  

After two to three hours, we made it to the border. The Vietnamese officials greeted us with, “Dollar.” To which we responded confusedly, “What? We don’t have any dollars.” He pushed our passports back to us and walked away. Ah. Our first lesson in bribery and corruption. I fished my last 20,000 kip note out of my wallet and passed it over. He asked us for another, but our exasperated, “We don’t have anything else!” finally did the trick. Bastard. It was only $3, but I despise dishonesty and it added another dimension of bull shit to the day.  

As if that wasn’t bad enough, as we walked away from the immigration window, we found our bags lying by the side of the road. The bus driver had obviously decided to throw them off. We picked them up and ran to the bus fuming. The driver tried to distract us and tell us to go to the money exchange. We managed to put our bags back on the bus and did what the driver told us to, to show the final immigration official our passports. (Side note—only two other people on the bus went through immigration at all. Weird system they have between Vietnam and Laos? Either that or all the people on that bus were just as shit and corrupt.) The bus passed through the final point shortly after we did, but instead of stopping when it got to us, it passed right by. We thought it would stop in front of us, but it kept going, going. We had to yell at it to get it to stop. We were absolutely furious when we got back on. Surely enough, that damn bus was trying to leave us at the border. Bad, bad people! 

We made it to the next stop in Vietnam, god knows what town. Everyone got off the bus, but we stayed, not letting them again have the opportunity to try to leave us behind. (We didn’t drink any water during the four hour trip and didn’t chance a bathroom trip. Didn’t help make the trip any better.) Then they transferred us onto another bus that was actually going to Vinh (false-advertising, overcharging, BAD a-holes weren’t going that far). After making sure they knew we had already paid, we got into the next bus. That bus was fine people-wise, but on my lord the road. The next stint of our trip took another three to four hours on the worst pothole-filled, unsealed roads I’ve ever been on. The first 15 minutes, the other passengers were looking back at us to see our reactions to such bumpy roads. I didn’t really get it at the time, thinking we’d be back on sealed road soon. We’d been on unsealed roads—no big deal. But after three hours? Pain!  Literally, in the ass. And spirit breaking. We were so looking forward to leaving Laos and getting to Vietnam, and this was not the entrance we were hoping for.  

When we finally landed in Vinh, we had no map and no idea where we were. Marcus got his wits about him and suggested we go into the shopping mall they dropped us off at. We stumbled across a KFC with free wifi. Thank goodness for free wifi. We hopped in, grabbed some very welcome chicken burgers and figured out where the hell we were and how to get to the bus station. A short walk later, we tramped into the station and we gratefully followed the first tout who offered an overnight bus to Hanoi. There was three hours to kill before the bus left, though, so we again took a walk and ended up stopping at one of the many sidewalk tables for a bia Ha Noi (beer) to unwind. I don’t typically like beer, but Vietnamese beer is thankfully very light and almost like slightly flavoured water. And so cheap! We were just starting to enjoy this little piece of happiness when one of the locals decided to join us at our table. After the hellish day, we were not up to having someone else around and to decipher whether their friendliness was genuine or whether they were trying to get something from us. I usually try to avoid all forms of rudeness, but I couldn’t carry on conversation or answer his questions very politely. He finally left (and paid for his own bill, which surprised me—and led me to believe that he was just genuinely being friendly) and after wasting some time in the station, we finally got on our bus. Which was another battle. They wrote some letters and numbers that didn’t correspond to any of the seat numbers on the bus, and the overly aggressive bus steward had a good shout at us (after freaking out at us for not taking our shoes off as we got on the bus—who knew?). We argued back a good bit and finally just agreed to the cocoon-like seats at the back corner of the bus. Luckily it was a sleeper bus and our seats were pretty much 180 degrees. Unluckily, in the back you’re sleeping like sardines in a can and I slept squished in between Marcus and random stranger to my right who seemed to enjoy alternately talking loudly on his phone and blasting music from his phone. Then there was the unwieldy screaming child who kept grabbing my feet… we put our earplugs in quickly and somehow managed to get some sleep. 

Finally, after a long day and a half, we reached Hanoi at 5am. Bleary-eyed and filled with just enough adrenaline, we began our time in Vietnam.