After we'd accomplished 'Tubing Mission: Round Two' we toyed with the idea of doing something else that we'd decided was out of our budgets on our previous visit to Vang Vieng - a hot air balloon ride! At around £40 for an hour's flight it's the cheapest place in the world to do it however that's a lot of money considering I'm on a budget of around £15 a day; we decided that we'd justify the spend by trying to skip meals here and there for a few weeks plus at this point I gave up buying bottled water and instead opted for luke warm Asian tap water dun dun duuuuun.......don't worry, I've been drinking it for a few weeks now and I'm not dead yet - wahoo! Thank you, India for my stomach of STEEL. So yes, we talked ourselves into the hot air balloon ride at sunset over the magnificent Laos landscape of rivers, rice fields, villages and jagged, sharply protruding mountains. Stunning. The flight took off with us three and five strangers just as the sun was setting, casting amber-trimmed shadows across the vast rural land. At one point we went so low - almost touching the tips of trees - that we were concerned there was something wrong however the pilot couldn't explain as he didn't speak any English so, in between screams, we all promptly whipped out our iPhones to video what could have potentially been our demise so that future YouTubers could watch in delighted horror. Thankfully we were ok in the end (otherwise I wouldn't be writing this) and we landed safely albeit none the wiser as to what had happened (sorry YouTubers).
The balloon ride was our 'going away' party for Victorine, our crazy Dutch travel buddy for the last month, as she was Myanmar bound before returning to her home; when I came travelling I thought the only goodbyes I'd have to deal with were those involving my pretty excellent family and friends in England however what I didn't expect was to find it so hard to part with those special people I've met along the way that have truly made my trip so spectacular. After meeting for the first time in Thailand in November and then rejoining in the south of Laos for a month of ridiculous fun, Evie and I were so sad to say goodbye to Vic but it was time for us to go to Vietnam. All over South East Asia we'd heard rumours about the notoriously hideous bus journey from Loas to Hanoi in Vietnam so it's safe to say we were dreading it like an Asian dreads western toilets (and that's A LOT, tell tale clues of this are muddy footprints on the toilet seat...). Ready for hell we boarded the sleeper bus that we'd been promised would be proper lay down beds - we even payed extra for it - but it turned out to be sleeper chairs that only come in Asian sizes i.e. nowhere near big enough for us cumbersome westerners. A bad start. As we drove out of the bus station - aka pandemonium central - we gratefully realised that the bus was only half full, got talking to some Ozzies and other fellow English people and all promptly commandeered the upper level of sleeper chairs meaning we had room to watch movies, play UNO and chat. Yes, the bus broke down about five times, yes, it took 37 hours instead of 19, yes, we all had to get out half asleep at 4am because a lorry had jackknifed across the road and yes, I chipped a tooth on stale road-cafe peanut brittle however the journey really wasn't as bad as it was fabled to be, mainly because of the extra space and the company. Asian buses don't tend to have toilets so they stop regularly and on one of these stops we realised the cargo hold was full of bags of live piglets which the Laos men were kicking and dragging around; I despise seeing this sort of thing, however usual it is around here. I've found that there's a fine line between respecting the culture of the country you're travelling in and standing idly by whilst unnecessary cruelty takes place and I ask myself - at what point does one step in?
We arrived in Vietnam very late the next evening at the 'bus depo', which was actually a deserted patch of dirt behind someone's house, and waited for a taxi. We were trying to negotiate a price for the cab but the driver didn't speak any English - at that moment a man with rolled up carpets slung over his shoulder emerged out of the darkness and got involved in the negotiation, he babbled away to the driver and then got 350,000 Vietnamese Dong (£10) in notes out of his wallet to represent how much we had to pay for the journey to our hostel (showing the notes is a common way to handle the language barrier when paying for things). We haggled them down and they eventually agreed to 250,000 Dong so we followed the driver into the taxi but were stopped by the man with the carpets who was demanding the money from us?! We were extremely confused but....it turned out that, unbeknownst to us, we had actually been 'buying' carpets and not the taxi!!! Choking on our own laughter we politely declined and got into what we then found out was a strictly metered taxi anyway! FYI the taxi turned out to be a lot cheaper than the carpet!! Asia travel...enough said.
We watched the balloons being set up.
The breathtaking view of the sunset from a very unique angle!
Bird's eye view of the river we'd been tubing in.
It was more adrenaline-inducing than I'd expected (yay!) as there was only a thin floor between us and nothingness!
The balloon ride was our 'going away' party for Victorine, our crazy Dutch travel buddy for the last month, as she was Myanmar bound before returning to her home; when I came travelling I thought the only goodbyes I'd have to deal with were those involving my pretty excellent family and friends in England however what I didn't expect was to find it so hard to part with those special people I've met along the way that have truly made my trip so spectacular. After meeting for the first time in Thailand in November and then rejoining in the south of Laos for a month of ridiculous fun, Evie and I were so sad to say goodbye to Vic but it was time for us to go to Vietnam. All over South East Asia we'd heard rumours about the notoriously hideous bus journey from Loas to Hanoi in Vietnam so it's safe to say we were dreading it like an Asian dreads western toilets (and that's A LOT, tell tale clues of this are muddy footprints on the toilet seat...). Ready for hell we boarded the sleeper bus that we'd been promised would be proper lay down beds - we even payed extra for it - but it turned out to be sleeper chairs that only come in Asian sizes i.e. nowhere near big enough for us cumbersome westerners. A bad start. As we drove out of the bus station - aka pandemonium central - we gratefully realised that the bus was only half full, got talking to some Ozzies and other fellow English people and all promptly commandeered the upper level of sleeper chairs meaning we had room to watch movies, play UNO and chat. Yes, the bus broke down about five times, yes, it took 37 hours instead of 19, yes, we all had to get out half asleep at 4am because a lorry had jackknifed across the road and yes, I chipped a tooth on stale road-cafe peanut brittle however the journey really wasn't as bad as it was fabled to be, mainly because of the extra space and the company. Asian buses don't tend to have toilets so they stop regularly and on one of these stops we realised the cargo hold was full of bags of live piglets which the Laos men were kicking and dragging around; I despise seeing this sort of thing, however usual it is around here. I've found that there's a fine line between respecting the culture of the country you're travelling in and standing idly by whilst unnecessary cruelty takes place and I ask myself - at what point does one step in?
There was just enough time for a farewell face-paint.
It's not a legit Vietnamese bus if it doesn't have disco lights.
One of the small pigs stuffed inside a sack, it was squealing and screaming, I didn't know what to do!
The bus couldn't drive through the roadside ditch to pass the jackknifed lorry with us inside so we stumbled out like zombies and hung around in the road for ages.
We arrived in Vietnam very late the next evening at the 'bus depo', which was actually a deserted patch of dirt behind someone's house, and waited for a taxi. We were trying to negotiate a price for the cab but the driver didn't speak any English - at that moment a man with rolled up carpets slung over his shoulder emerged out of the darkness and got involved in the negotiation, he babbled away to the driver and then got 350,000 Vietnamese Dong (£10) in notes out of his wallet to represent how much we had to pay for the journey to our hostel (showing the notes is a common way to handle the language barrier when paying for things). We haggled them down and they eventually agreed to 250,000 Dong so we followed the driver into the taxi but were stopped by the man with the carpets who was demanding the money from us?! We were extremely confused but....it turned out that, unbeknownst to us, we had actually been 'buying' carpets and not the taxi!!! Choking on our own laughter we politely declined and got into what we then found out was a strictly metered taxi anyway! FYI the taxi turned out to be a lot cheaper than the carpet!! Asia travel...enough said.
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