We had heard the bus ride from Vietnam to Laos was the bus ride from hell, a 24 hour journey on a sleeper bus with a 3 hour stop at the border to get the visa for Laos. We had been told at the travel agent that the bus ride would only take 16 hours. Obviously a little white lie to get us to book through her. We knew it would be much longer after reading many posts about the trip from other travellers. It was the 27 USD that got us to book. The cheapest we could find! And after tossing up whether or not to fork out the $200 each for a comfortable 1 hour flight we decided to save the money, toughen up and pack ourselves onto the ‘bus ride from hell’.
After arriving on the bus and realising the bus driver did not care what seat you had been assigned as long as all the foreigners were shoved as far up the back as possible in the most uncomfortable seats we ended up in the very seats we were dreading. A row of three of the smallest seats all connected together. After a few arguments with the bus driver by a number of people on the bus we still ended up in the squishy back seat. Little did we know it would end up being a blessing in disguise. Most of the trip we had three seats to ourselves, we could spread out and it was like sleeping in a double bed for the night, or like sleeping on a trampoline with the non stop bouncing over unsealed roads all trip.
After arriving at the border at 7 am, we got stamped out of Vietnam and walked the 10 mins down the dirt road to the Laos border, payed 35 USD each for the visa and then proceeded to sit on the side of the road for 4 hours waiting for the bus to come through the border. Luckily we had a pretty cool group of other tourists on the bus to pass the time with but non the less it was a pretty long time sitting around thinking the bus had taken off with all our bags on it, because of course no one told us what was going on.
Another 12 hours later we arrived in Vientiane and checked into a hostel with a couple of the other people from the bus.
We expected the streets to be packed with scooters, littered with rubbish and to be hassled at every corner like Vietnam, but Vientiane was nothing like we expected. It was quiet, clean and very laid back.
We immediately thought we would enjoy Laos.
A bit over sitting on a bus for 24 hours.
The longest bus ride ever
Leave a Reply