We asked the four teenage girls that ran our guesthouse what time the songthaew back to Ban Khoun Kham was and were told we should be ready by 7am. We have gotten really good at getting ready in the morning, it is amazing how fast you can pack and dress when you don't care what you look like and you simply cram all of your stuff in your bag. We were ready by 6:40 and started walking in the street towards Kong Lor Cave, where the songthaew would be coming from. Before long we could hear the horn of the truck and then it rounded the corner in front of us and we hopped on with the the locals. As the truck drove the hour and 20 minute road it constantly honked at people to see if they wanted a ride and stopped whenever anyone wanted on.
It seemed impossible to overfill the songthaew, there was alway more room. Half way through the ride the driver produced a third wooden bench to cram more people into the middle.
At one point three elderly women got on the songthaew, they all appeared to be suffering badly from osteoporosis and looked like the letter 'r'. The smallest and frailest of the three took a seat next to me. She put her hand on my knee for support as she couldn't reach the hand bar at the top of the songthaew. I know the woman was just holding on so that she didn't fall over but I found the act comforting and as if I was accepted among the locals, it made me smile.
When we had initially gotten onto the songthaew we told the driver where we wanted to go a town called Lak Sao an hour and a half East of Ban Khoun Kham. When the songthaew stopped in Ban Khoun Kham to change passengers the driver instructed us to stay put, inside of the songthaew. I was satisfied that we were going to the right place but Janelle wanted to double check. I hopped out and showed the driver in our guidebook where we wanted to go. The driver then told us to get off, this songthaew was going West, not East. It's a good thing Janelle had me check or this would have been an even longer day than it ended up being.
We waited for the next songthaew that would come whenever the driver wanted and as there were not any scheduled times. When the songthaew pulled up it had a motorbike in the back, we climbed aboard around the motorbike for an uneventful hour and a half to Lak Sao.
When we arrived in Lak Sao we were met by several touts saying "Vietnam", we ignored them all and went into the bus station. There was a whiteboard with destinations, times and amounts written on it. In many places in Southeast Asia it is really hard to tell who officially works for a place, who is a tout and who is just a normal person. We had a guy point to Vinh on the board and asked if we needed help. We asked him if there was an earlier bus than 1pm, the only time listed on the board as our Laos guidebook said there should be 4 buses. The man told us there was also a bus at 12:30 and that it was the same price. I stepped forward to the ticket counter and the man who was helping me explained to the guy behind the counter, who didn't have as good English, where we wanted to go. The ticket counter man wrote out a ticket for Vinh for 12:30 and I paid him the same rate as written on the sign and listed in my guidebook.
We went to have some lunch, our first food of the day as we waited for 12:30 to roll around. When we got back to the bus station we found our bus and discovered that it was neither a tourist bus nor a local bus but a private bus full of fish food, beer, bamboo mats, flip flops in addition to many other things. These items were stuffed everywhere around inside of the bus.
Janelle and I went back to the station attendant to complain that we wanted a normal bus but his English suddenly became even worse than before and he just kept motioning for us to get on the bus. We argued with the people on the bus to get a seat that didn't have bags of fish food where our feet were supposed to be and we headed off at 12:30 in a bus full of goods to be taken across the border to Vietnam.
The bus headed off on time but was going in the wrong direction, instead of heading towards Vietnam, it was heading away from it. I stood up protesting that we were driving the wrong way and was assured we would be turning around. The bus then proceeded to go to the far West side of town, turn around and then drive back East towards Vietnam as it filled up with more wares and people. We drove back past the bus station at 1pm where more local people boarded the bus. The bus was really supposed to leave at 1pm, but they had left at 12:30 to put on a little show for us. The bus drove slowly honking and picking up more people as it drove East towards Vietnam.
When we got to the border we had to get stamped out of Laos and then reboard the bus to the Vietnamese checkpoint. We then got stamped into Vietnam and headed out on the bus. After a while we came to a Vietnamese town, I have no idea what its name is, where we drove the bus around dropping of items at various shops.
After we had driven all over town dropping off the items we were driven back to the center of this unknown town where the remaining seven passengers got off the bus. I didn't know the name of the town but I knew it wasn't Vinh, we started to argue with the guy on the bus telling him that this wasn't Vinh and we had paid to be taken there. The driver then motioned for us to join the other 5 locals who had disembarked onto another bus marked Vinh. Our driver then gave the new driver money for all 7 of us. When the second driver saw that Janelle and I weren't Vietnamese or Laotian he demanded more money from the original driver who refused to pay any more. We were told we couldn't get on the bus.
The original driver then found a Vietnamese guy on the street and gave him our bus fare. The original driver then hopped back into his bus and drove back towards Laos leaving is stranded in some unknown Vietnamese town.
A man from a cell phone store across the street and came over and asked what was going on, we explained the situation to him and he made a phone call and told us to wait for five minutes. Shortly after that a similar bus to the one that had refused to take us drove up and agreed to take us for the local rate to Vinh.
TO BE CONTINUED...here
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