Vientiane

After a good night's sleep we spent the next day having our last hours chilling on the Nha Trang beach before embarking on what was to become a nightmarish journey.

We got a sleeper bus overnight to Hoi An (A UNESCO World Heritage City due to it's prettiness, supposedly) but sleep wasn't exactly what the bus seemed designed for. Not only were the beds way too small for us three but we were put at the back of the bus where 5 beds are jammed together. Throw in an American dude and his girlfriend it makes for one cosy night of sleeping. Not to mention the fact that the back of the bus is not only the bumpiest but also the closest to the engine therefore the loudest part of the bus. Felly shotgunned the window seat and I quickly shotgunned having my feet dangling into the aisle; leaving Walmo to sleep in the middle where there was the least leg space. Luckily after about an hour's worth of travelling, the bus attendant told one of us to move into an actual bed in the row ahead. I stepped up and slept in what could better be described as a straight jacket.

All of this however was manageable. The main problem was an incessant beeping noise beeped every second at a high pitch - much like an alarm intended to wake someone up from a sleep. I got about an hour's sleep that night.

We arrived in Hoi An all a little grouchy and tired not knowing exactly what our plan was. We wandered around the quaint city for an hour, seeing the market and the Japanese Bridge (so famous in Vietnam it's on the 20,000Dong note); then we got a taxi up to Da Nang, the major city in central Vietnam. We then bought a bus ticket from a travel agency swarming with kittens from Da Nang to Vientiane (800mi from Nha Trang). We got on the bus a few hours later to Hue to find out when we arrived that because the bus driver was driving slowly we had missed our connecting bus. However it took then 15minutes for one of them to finally explain to us what had happened. Pretty annoyed we were forced to check into a hotel for the night - although thankfully for me I got to catch up on some much needed sleep. After many jokes, mainly revolving around the fact that Hue is pronounced Whaayyy; we were ready for our next mammoth bus journey. This time, leaving Hue and changing buses at a city named Vinh, near the border.

We arrived at Vinh at approximately 1am where a bus heading to Vientiane was waiting, with a few seats left. Bus company employees told us not to bother going onto this one as we had paid for a sleeper bus with beds, and a sleeper bus was arriving in about an hour. This gave us time to have dinner and chill. At about 2.30am our sleeper bus arrived. The same employee who told us not to bother to get the last bus to Vientiane then told us, laughing, that this bus to Vientiane was full. Not only was it full but 4 people were sleeping on the floor so there was literally no space. Luckily there was a Korean tour group parked close by so we eventually managed to swindle our way onto their tour, as they too were next stopping in Vientiane. Joined by a fellow traveller named Nathan from Brighton, we eventually were able to sleep on a bus without worry.

After border control and a further few hours travelling through the country to the capital - we arrived 10km outside of the city where were we left on a roadside of a highway. Luckily we waved down a tuk tuk after about 15minutes and got to the centre.

Today we're getting a bus to Vang Vieng, home of the infamous Tubing; where everyone goes on the river with a tube, stopping at bar after bar after bar. Sounds like something we'd do.