千里之行 始于足下

For your convenience, please refer to The Journey for the itinerary and the latest updates.

Weather: Fine

Distance covered today: 215km
Distance traveled from Guangzhou: 2,029km
Distance remaining to Singapore: 3,075km

Fact of the day: The Tay Trang/Sop Hun border between Vietnam and Laos (the one I used in this entry) was only opened to foreign travelers since May 2007.

The usual suspects all turned up at the bus station before the scheduled time of 5.30 am. Two more French turned up and brought the total to six. I would later find out that they were university students on exchange in Shanghai.

BP and I were browsing the stalls beside the bus stations before boarding the bus. They were open early for business and I decided to grab some biscuits as I was left with quite a bit of VND. This proved to be one of the best decisions for the trip.

My bus for the trip:

According to a friend who could read Korean (no prize guessing who), one of its former incarnation was a bus belonging to Hansei University.

The bus got moving before 6am but stopped off somewhere to pick up more passengers and cargo. Another French backpacker caught the bus which brought the total number of French to seven. Although the border was rumored to be 35km away, the bad conditions of both the roads and the bus made the journey seemed forever. Along the way I was treated to one of the most surreal sights in the world; felt as if we were above the clouds.

It was already bright (around 8am) when the bus arrived at the immigration building on the Vietnamese side (KM 1849).

The Vietnamese officials at the border were friendly and I got stamped out in no time. We would wait a while before everyone had their documents checked.

The Lao immigration building was several kilometers away. Laos would be the eight Southeast Asian countries that I visited. Only Brunei, Philippines and Timor Leste left!

The Thai guys and I didn’t need a visa so we handed in our passports after writing the arrival forms. One of the immigration officials asked us whether we had any VND which we wanted to get rid of. I didn’t think that the exchange rate was fantastic but I got rid all my VND for some Lao Kip (LAK).

I was charged 7,000 LAK for the privilege of entering Laos on a Saturday; part of it was “stamping fee” and the other part was “extra time charge”. I forgot the breakdown but there was a proper receipt. It seemed that these fees were ‘official’ so I wasn’t too unhappy. The Europeans had it worse as they had to pay extra time charge for their Lao visa-on-arrival (on top of stamping fee plus late charge).

BP and I chatted a bit more while waiting for the rest of the passengers to be legally checked into Laos. He thought that all the extra fees seemed to be a ripoff; my (weak) explanation was that corruption in other countries (Cambodia for instance) in the region was much worse. BP didn’t like Vietnam so much as well; the Vietnamese are generally less friendlier than Thais and hardly anyone speak any English outside Sapa.

The bus had to stop again due to road works after barely leaving the Lao immigration building.

Luckily we only needed to wait about 15 minutes.

We came across quite a number of bald hills on the windy road. It was kinda worrying as the lack of trees increases the likelihood of landslides.

I drifted in and out of sleep for the remaining journey to Muang Khua. Although the distance between the Muang Khua and the border was only 75km, the bus’s wretched conditions meant that we rarely went beyond 20 km/h.

The bus finally reached Muang Khua (KM 1924) at almost 2pm. We would need to cross the Nam Ou river for our onward journey.

One had to pay 2,000 LAK to cross the river in the long boat.

Across the bank, we met another traveler coming from the other direction. He had arrived earlier in the day from Udomxai and pointed us the way to the bus station. BP and some of the travelers needed some local money but the bank in Muang Khua was closed on a Saturday afternoon. Arriving at the station (sawngthaew from ferry crossing point 4,000 LAK per person), I bought myself a ticket to Udomxai. I forgot the time of departure but I was quite certain that it was between 3.30pm and 4.00pm.

It turned out that not all the travelers would get on the same minivan; BP and the Thai guys would have to wait for the next departure. As I was among the last to board the bus, I got a makeshift seat on the aisle along with a few others. The minivan was definitely in a better condition compared to the cross-border bus and so were the roads. We were in Udomxai in less than the three hours expected.

The minivan would pass through Udomxai town before the bus station and I was surprised to see that many of the shops there had Chinese signs. Apparently a large number of the residents there are Chinese. Once at the bus station, I checked out the timings for next day’s buses to Luang Prabang. After noting down the time of the earliest bus, I saw two guesthouses across the street. The guy outside the one without Chinese signboard beckoned me over and asked me whether I was looking for accommodation.

He showed me the better room first (is it an essential sales tactic?) which came with attached bathroom, two beds and satellite TV. As in Cambodia, the satellite TV in Laos came from Thailand’s True Corporation. I asked that if there was anything cheaper and I was shown a room with a large bed, no TV or attached shower. The choice wasn’t too difficult as I didn’t mind watching some movies to while out the night. It turned out that HBO was showing The Dark Knight and I ended up watching quite a bit of it before convincing myself the need to find some dinner.

I went to town and decided to eat some barbecue. The girl at the store couldn’t reply to my English and I tried my luck with Mandarin. She replied in very thickly accented Mandarin (almost incomprehensible to me) about the prices and I asked for rice to go with my food. It was a welcoming meal as my last proper one was the dinner the previous night before at DBP.

Like DBP where evenings are as exciting as watching grass grow, I retreated back to my comfortable room after dinner. HBO was showing Charlie Wilson’s War and No Country for Old Men after the Dark Knight.

I caught the former but was too tired for the latter. I also made a mental note to read up about Charlie Wilson when I got the chance.

For your convenience, please refer to The Journey for the itinerary and the latest updates.

Weather: Fine

Distance covered today: 285km
Distance traveled from Guangzhou: 1,814km
Distance remaining to Singapore: 3,290km

Fact of the day: Dien Bien Phu was the site of the famous battle during the First Indochina War in 1954.

It was New Year’s Day but nothing changed. I still had to wake up early to catch my bus. I was asked to arrive by 7.00am at the travel agency for the scheduled departure of 7.30am. Like everywhere else in this part of the world, the minibus arrived late and I was shoved inside it which was already packed with passengers.

Our route for the day

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It turned out that about half of the passengers on board were locals and the rest tourists. French seemed to be the predominant nationality among the tourists and we picked up two Thai guys on the way out of Sapa. It was a tight squeeze; seats meant for three had to accommodate four. Vietnamese safety standards are clearly not quite the same as back home. There was a guy who acted as an assistant to the driver. He would got everyone sorted and seated in the correct position. He wanted me to move behind to squeeze with three other tourists in the last row and I claimed that it was impossible. Luckily he didn’t insist and my row only sat three persons throughout the trip.

The road out of Sapa definitely wasn’t one of the best that I traveled on.

Although I can’t deny that the scenery was spectacular.

We stopped at a roadside restaurant about 2.5 hours after Sapa. It was a little too early for lunch but I got some pho in anticipation of the long journey ahead. After lunch, our driver would yet pick up another passenger on the cramped minivan. The assistant kept hitting on the new lady passenger (which irritated the hell out of me) which finally stopped when she got car-sick and didn’t want to talk anymore.

I observed that the locals are more susceptible to car-sickness compared to foreign travelers in mountainous areas. My little hypothesis (perhaps someone can prove it please) is that despite living in regions with curvy roads, the locals didn’t travel on motor vehicles much. Most of their rides are short ones and they only travel out of necessity. Meanwhile the foreigners are often hardened travelers who have more than their fair share of bumpy roads and thus less likely to get car-sick. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

At about 2.30pm, a roadblock (KM unknown) prevented us from continuing our journey. Prior to that the roads weren’t too bad and the vehicle was burning the distances at pretty good speed.

Apparently a rock had fallen from the cliff and killed someone. The police officers closed the road for investigations and only motorcycles could pass through the affected sector.

During the stop I chatted with some of the other travelers. Like me, they were all going to cross over to Laos the next day. I guess one really had to be patient traveling in this part of the world; nothing really runs on schedule and roadblocks like this happen all the time.

There was a dam construction project right beside where the accident took place.

While a new dam would bring economic benefits, dam construction and tunnel-building were known to cause soil erosion and landslides. Was the dam to be blamed for the unfortunate event? I had heard all about how the dam projects affect the ecosystem in Sikkim. The location might have change but the impacts were eerily similar.

Finally our vehicle got going after almost two hours. I was puzzled why the police officers couldn’t open the road earlier but I shouldn’t criticize things that I didn’t understand.

Something interesting en route:

The lost hours would cause us to arrive at Dien Bien Phu (KM 1,814) after sunset.

The Thai guys were able to communicate with some of the people at bus station in Thai/Lao and through them we knew about the connecting bus to Laos the next day. After registering and paying for the ticket (88,000 VND), getting accommodation was next on the agenda.

Fortunately I had made use of the unsecured Wifi in Sapa to research on Travelfish. It is a really comprehensive online portal for backpacking visitors to Southeast Asia and it is highly recommended for anyone going to the region.

I ended up with Viet Hoang Guest House, located diagonally across the bus station. I shared the room (Twin, 150,000 VND per room) with a British backpacker from the bus. I’m sorry that I forgot his name and let’s just call him BP.

We had a rather expensive dinner at a eating place two shopfronts away from the guest house and managed to trade some travel stories. He was on a two month trip to Southeast Asia and was going back to Thailand after seeing Laos. There didn’t seem to have much going on at DBP in the evening and both of us turned in early. BP was especially tired since he had a late night on NYE in Sapa while I wasn’t looking forward to yet another early start the following morning.