Sorry for the Group Email

After the Plain of Jars, things went downhill fast. A group of irritating Canadian tourists started it. “I dare you to kick that duck,” said one. Extraordinarily, the other one did, swinging a foot at a duck under the confused gaze of a woman whose only job was to show tourists how rice wine was made. Who dares another grown-up to kick a duck, for God’s sake?

Worse than that, we didn’t know what we were doing. Not being part of an organised tour is great, but it does mean that at some point you need to hitch up your trousers and make some decisions. To visit either Laos’ capital, Vientienne, or Vang Vieng would mean an eight-hour backtrack by bus. I’ve had a lifelong aversion to backtracking, something that got me into frequent trouble as a van driver, as I’d drive around countless streets to avoid admitting defeat and performing a three-point turn to go back the way I came.

At length we decided to leave Laos and head straight to Vinh in Vietnam, 12 hours away by bus. Actually, a German decided it for us, dismissing Vang Vieng as a place where there was “too much drinking”. A German saying somewhere has too much drinking is a bit like a Milwall fan saying somewhere has too much fighting, and so we decided to buy tickets the next morning.

This left us with another problem. We had the not-so-princely sum of $12 and a handful of Laotien money left over, totaling well under £20 total. Most of this would be used up paying our hotel. What was left would need to account for two bus tickets. If our hotel decided it wanted Kip rather than dollars, we’d be left with about 90p for a 12 hour bus ride. If the bus broke down we’d have no money for a room, and little for food. There are not, to the best of my knowledge, any cash points east of Phonsavanh. There aren’t any in Phonsavanh, either.

We went to bed deeply unhappy. We were two people with no money and a shaky plan, which doesn’t make, unsurprisingly, for happy campers.

At that moment I hated traveling. I hated Phonsavanh, which has one main road and no cash machines. (Nor does it have anything to do if you’re there for more than 48 hours, but that’s neither here nor there.) I hated our reliance on Visa cards and the troubling fact that we’d virtually run out of money. I wished – how I wished – that I’d blink and wake up in our old flat, all reassuring views of London and comforting corner shops. As it was we had a hotel room with a dim bulb in the top corner, a bathroom with a small hole in the wall, and a plan that could very well leave us on a bus for 12 hours with enough money for a small bottle of water. If we bargained.

Incredibly, the hotel clerk, bleary-eyed and possibly discombobulated at five thirty in the morning, took our dollars, despite there being a 50c shortfall in how much we gave her.

12 hours turned into 12 and a half, and eventually turned into 13. Us and a small contingent of fellow travellers uncomprehendingly followed a tout into a small restaurant in the bus station once we arrived in Vinh. “You want ticket to Hanoi?”, he asked.

We did, but we’d intended to take the train, and I’m not sure whether it was the exhaustion of the journey (13 hours on a public bus through Laos and Vietnam is as cramped and sweaty as it sounds) or simply the fact that the rest of our impromptu group decided to take the tickets, but we paid up for a sleeper bus.

No sooner did we reach the bus than we realised we’d made a terrible mistake. The promise of a bus with beds evaporated as we stared unhappily at the tightly-packed seats. The air-conditioning left us shivering. (I don’t understand this. Surely someone somewhere understands that air conditioning has a medium setting and knows how to use it.) Immediately, the man in front thrust his seat as far back as it would go which, co-incidentally, was the point at which his chair back ground painfully into my knees, a position it would remain in for the next six hours. For the second time in a day I fell into a miserable sleep, hoping to awake to the memory of a bad dream.

I didn’t wake up. Well, I did, but things, incredibly, extraordinarily, got worse when we arrived in Hanoi. It was four thirty am, not five, which doesn’t sound like much, but believe me, every minute of uncomfortable, chilly sleep counts when you’ve been on the move for 24 hours. It was dark outside and we stepped off our bus into light but insistent rain. We were instantly surrounded by motorcycle taxi drivers. They poked and prodded, whistled and shouted until

my sense of humour, already battered and frayed around the edges, broke down. I became that tourist. You’ve seen them, sitting unhappily and inconsolably on top of their bags in Victoria railway station, knowing only where they want to go, rather than having the full details of how fleshed out in their minds.

Eventually, Mendy, who is infinitely more useful than I am during these stressful moments, discovered the number eight bus, which would deliver us to Hoan Kiem Lake, in the middle of Hanoi. The first one, of course, was full.

Still, it was a stroke of genius, and the second bus dropped us in downtown Hanoi and things began – began – to shape up. We were at last somewhere we had a map for. We had enough cash for several days of eating and hotels. We knew which direction we needed to go, and had a promising list of hotels.

At 6am, Hanoi is astonishingly busy. Hundreds of joggers and exercise buffs surrounded the lake, and in the morning mist people did pull-ups on every available sign and lamp-post. Ordinarily I’d be able to provide pictures. As it was, the part of my brain in charge of shutter speeds continued to doze grumpily, so we marched on into the old quarter.

The feeling of relief when we found a hotel (albeit on our fourth attempt) was immense. Not only did the Return Hotel have a room we could immediately check into, it also had air conditioning, satellite TV and wireless internet, all for $18 a night.

We didn’t notice. The preceding 27 hours had been – variously – stressful, irritating, deeply, impossibly uncomfortable, cold and wet. Vietnam could only have started worse if it had involved falling anvils and armed robbery.

But we were dry, in a hotel and most importantly asleep. Things were looking up.

Dave really likes Vietnam. Just not at five in the morning.

Tags: aversion, backtrack, bus ride, bus tickets, campers, canadian tourists, d drive, decisions, gaze, god, handful, hanoi, Laos, next morning, phonsavanh, plain of jars, princely sum, rice wine, sake, trousers, vang vieng, Vietnam, vinh