AND then there were two. As you may read about on the posts guest-written by M on our last two days in Hanoi, this is the end of this section with her - she has now flown back to the UK and J and I have continued into Laos. It feels simultaneously like ages and no time at all since we met up in Tokyo. Things are just a little lonelier now. This post won't be a long one you'll be glad to hear because it was a few days ago now and basically nothing happened.
We left Hanoi on a bus that we had been shepherded to when our bus, that we had booked, turned out to be full. It was a sleeper with 2 aisles (so 3 rows of beds) and while the beds were very thin there was nothing to complain about because we'd only paid 500000 dong for the pair of us which seemed impossible (n.b. it was). That bus unfortunately stopped by a petrol station at about 2300 and deposited us and a few other passengers in the forecourt, with the promise that another bus would come and get us in about 5 minutes. That it did and even better it was a 1-aisle sleeper with much bigger beds and fancy lighting, similar to the one we had taken up to Sa Pa which I haven't written about I don't think but I cba to check. This lasted all of 5 minutes until we were deposited once again, this time outside some sort of weird open-planned high-ceilinged building. It was definitely meant to be a bus-waiting place (I don't know how else to describe it because it wasn't a stop or a station) but like many things here it was also someone's residence. But there was a Western toilet with toilet paper AND soap, water, chairs, and some figures of Jesus and Mary on the wall so we felt very at home.
At about half eleven we got back on the bus but with loads more people who had turned up and much less luxury than before - we had to share one bed at the back where the top layer covered the whole width of the bus, instead of there being a gap for the aisle, so we had to crawl out from it like a cave. There were also people sleeping in the aisle so once out of the cave you had to parkour yourself round the people to get out.
The border crossing didn't open until 7 so we were in a queue of trucks and buses for a few hours - there were roadside shops and cafes and in any case we had to stay outside because they turned the AC off in the bus when it was stationary. Also at other points on the route they kept stalling which was quite funny.
The border was similar to other land borders we've been to - seemingly set up for an operation bigger than they were dealing with - but not to the poetic extent of the Cambodian one. The Vietnamese exit guard wanted money to stamp out my passport and I tried to put up a fight but not hard enough. We met a man with an English name a French accent and an Austrian passport.
After the crossing we had to give the conductor $60 so the whole thing wasn't the impossible steal that it had seemed to be. But we were unexpectedly invited to join our fellow passengers for an apparently-complimentary meal in a roadside cafe so that was nice.
Vientiane is not really worth visiting. We spent a while (and a decent amount on taxi fares) going around bus offices and the airport to investigate the best way of getting to Sam Neua/Vieng Xai for the caves that we had spent the best part of the last 4 days deciding whether to go to or not. Then we booked a hotel and went to look at the city. The city is weird. A bunch of the roads in the area were under construction/reparation so you couldn't drive but also it was a bit difficult to walk. And the whole place just feels like it can't be bothered. There's some half-arsed tourist night markets and by the river there's a funfair thing but noone seemed very interested in it. The supermarkets are nice enough and I bought loads of really cheap instant noodles. We are some overpriced pizza in a expat-run place reminiscent of Koh Rong. In general it did feel like we were very ahead of the tourist curve but not really in a good way - there just isn't anything actually to see or do or experience and it's all a bit lethargic.
The second day we basically spent in bed. We had a breakfast at the hotel, which was nice, and there were loads of Westerners staying there despite us having seen very few last night. Predictably they were all a little bit strange. One guy was in a top covered in a dramatic picture of an American flag and a crucifix. He was accompanied by a middle-aged Lao woman and having seen a few such partnerships I think there must be sort of program where elderly people from somewhere in the west are sent to Laos for retirement care.
I went on a nighttime trip to the supermarket and got some pictures, because whenever people describe remote places as not really having much going on, I am always frustrated and fascinated, because like what do these places actually look like, how can somewhere so different to where you come from ever be boring, surely it's interesting just in the fact that there's so few people that visit and it's just a working city, etc. That's sort of true of Sam Neua. But it's not of Vientiane. It looks like this:
And finally, it's relevant here to write about something I've been meaning to write about for a while. Every time we see a Westerner somewhere where we aren't massively abundant, Vientiane being an extreme here, I always try to smile at them like hello we're here too. But they never smile back. To majorly and wrongly extrapolate, I read into this an attitude that they are so comfortable and feel so at home that a comforting smile from a stranger from their part of the world is an insult to their globalist perspective. Now obviously it would be very wrong to only feel comfortable in the company of other Westerners - that isn't my meaning at all. But I do think too many people get a little bit of a high off convincing themselves that they are ultra at home here, much prefer it to the West, and are thus superior to every other tourist. This becomes laughable in somewhere like Luang Prabang where we are now where the whole city has moulded itself around western tourists. But even outside of these hotspots I think these people need to get off their high horse a little bit. I miss a lot of things about Europe not because they're "better" but because they're home, and that's totally fine, and it's linked to what I've said before about Westerners forgetting they have a cultural identity, and letting the fascists hijack the whole idea. I love Britain because I love the font on the roadsigns and the smell of the supermarkets and the sweeping green valleys and the cities in the rain, because they're home. I also like the values my country claims to have, not the ones it actually espouses. That's what loving your country actually means it has fuck all to do with hating immigrants and it's utterly absurd to suggest it should. And there are also some things that are actually better, like the standard of toilets, and as I've mentioned before it doesn't do anyone any favours pretending they aren't. But maybe these tourists that never smile back and claim to love being in places like Vientiane before the crowds genuinely do and I'm just fragile and spoilt. Ok tangent over. If you disagree with anything I've just said please get in touch. Goodnight.