Long Haul to Savannakhet

Our epic journey continues, this time with a long bus ride across Vietnam and Laos. Early start, waiting at the travel office at around 6:30am before eventually a shuttle turns up to meet the bus at the southern bus station.

It's not a sleeping bus, unfortunately, but it's a proper coach with good sized seats and working air conditioning. The downside is that it's being heavily loaded up with goods - a full half of the 50-seater bus was piled up with cargo, and the entire floor under the seats too. Packed full of boxes mostly of produce: carrots, potatoes, limes, rice. So for almost the entire ride I had my feet on a box of bananas.

The bus left right on time at 8am and only stopped once to pick up more people. We were sitting just near a young English couple who were the only other westerners on the bus, so we chatted to them a bit. After about 3 hours and one brief bathroom stop we arrived at the Laos border.

Filling in our visa on arrival took ages partly because they were slow, but I had to fill my form in twice as they wouldn't use my Australian passport - they insisted I had to use my UK passport since that had the Vietnam exit stamp on it. And the British couple had been caught out that you need to pay for a visa, so they had a slow trip to an ATM as well.

Finally clearing the border, the bus had disappeared down the road though we'd been expecting this. The four of us walked in the heat for about a kilometre before we spotted the bus again, waiting impatiently. He could've parked a bit bloody closer!

Back on board where we drove basically straight across Laos without stopping, arriving eventually in Savannakhet at around 5pm. Said goodbye to our English friends and then walked to the hotel nearby, since we'd deliberately booked a hotel near the bus station.

All up the journey was long and uncomfortable, but nowhere near as bad as I'd anticipated.Read more