I got my Vietnamese visa in Thailand and remember being quite excited about going there. Since I have entered in Laos though other travellers have been sharing not so nice stories about the Vietnam. At some point I was even thinking not to go there at all, but fly back to Bangkok and go to Myanmar instead. Since I had the visa and I was not very far from the border I decided to give it a go and check it out for myself. Apparently not the easiest of all border crossings due to its remoteness, but how difficult could it be!
Sam Neua is the last bigger town on the Laos side. Apparently there was only one bus per week, on Saturday, that goes through the border. If not you have to get a tuk-tuk (small trucks fitted with seats for passengers at the back) to the Laos border and from there get another tuk-tuk to a town in Vietnam. Those on the Vietnamese side, however, run only Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. So it seemed to me that Saturday was the best day to do the crossing: I had two options in case one of them fails. So I had to hang around in the area, waiting for Saturday.
When Saturday finally arrived, I got up early and went to wait for the direct bus. To my great unsurprise the bus never arrived, maybe there were not enough passengers, or maybe there were too many and the bus left earlier when it got full. So I had to go with plan B and jumped on the tuk-tuk. On the tuk-tuk there were other 3 brave Swedish girls hoping to cross into Vietnam as well. One hour and half later we arrived at the border. So far so good! Now we had to find the tuk-tuk, which was supposed to be running on Saturdays from the Vietnamese side. Well, there was no tuk-tuk to be seen, only a bus with very grumpy driver who demanded $30 for the 200km to Hanoi, which sounded like a total rip off. Tried to bargain with him but he wouldn’t even speak to us. He would just inhale from his stinky cigarette and blow it in our sweaty faces with a smirk on his face. Obviously he had more information than we did. He knew that there was no other tuk-tuk coming, so our bargaining power was closer to nothing. As we were discussing our options or the lack of them, and we were about to surrender, he decided it was the right time to go a nap and left us running after him with dollar bills in our hands. He didn’t care, he knew that sooner or later the money will go to him anyway, why rush? ! !
At this point, we decided to hitchhike or pay a lorry to take us to Hanoi. Its seemed that all the people in the town had this secret pact to screw us up, so they were all pointing at the bus with no driver! Even the housewives, who were peeping out of the windows were repeating “$30, $30…” …..”Yeah, we are happy to pay $30 as long as anyone get us from God forgotten place!”
Then the owner of the local hotel, who happened to be friend of the driver, approached us to offers us rooms, telling us that the driver had no intention to leave today. He would wait for tomorrow for more tourists, and more cash. So we realised we were trapped by the Vietnamese border mafia and everyone was trying to make some quick cash from us. In a form of protest we refused to get room with the money- friend of the bus driver.
So our other option was to sleep on the bus, waiting for next day departure. But soon all the locals in the area knew we ll be sleeping on the bus, so we would be an easy target for anyone with wrong intentions. At this moment, we surrendered and went to check in the only other hotel in town, that was not participating in the scam and spend the night there until we find a way to get out of this trap for falangs (as they call us around here).
On the following day, after mentioning the word "embassies", even the police got involved. They obliously didn't want to have troubles, so eventually The Driver bent down and took us to Hanoi for $15.
