From Luang Prabang (Laos) via Night Bus to Vinh (Vietnam)

With the night bus from LP to Vinh in 17h, the one or other travel office in the vicinity of Mount Phousi offers...🌉🚌

The prices vary between 26 and 37 €

We book for the 24th of October and with pickup at the hotel at around 5:30 pm, we should start where we will be standing as ordered and not picked up with our luggage and have to ask the staff of the Aussibar to call the office so that we can possibly still catch the bus... We call the executing Mini&Bus office a few times to explain the matter, and now there is excitement about who and 'when, where, what' was exactly booked and where the Aussibar is located! After hanging up in a hurry once again. Hmmm we call by phone and go through all the information on our booking receipt and suddenly a man appears in front of the bar, asks briefly 'you go Vinh??' Uh yes and we trot about 50m with all our stuff behind him before we nervously think... Phew... too fast, he's gone. But hopefully he's just getting his vihecle from the next intersection, and we put down backpacks and bags... wait a few anxious minutes and indeed he has a transporter with which he quickly takes us to the bus station. Here we get on the

There we are the last passengers and the luggage is loaded hectically. Shoes off and through... all the way to the back, last row, wow everything is free but still somehow cramped!

A bumpy and curvy ride begins. Apart from a few bathroom breaks (&♨️🌱💈🌬bubbling breaks for the crew) we keep driving and around 4 o'clock in the morning the bus stops in front of the Vietnamese border and waiting for the border personnel begins!

At around 5 o'clock in the morning we briefly leave the bus with the 😴snoring passengers and suddenly a shot breaks the silence of the dawn and we hope that it was a hunter performing his duty 😯😞 it remains a single case and until emigrating/immigrating everything remains quiet.

We continue the journey around 8 o'clock and shortly afterwards we stop at a restaurant-canteen and the crew determines breakfast time and I see a smaller local bus with the inscription Vinh and show it to Adrienne and thank God we're not taking that one... we continue at 10 o'clock and I fall asleep again!

I am woken up by a crew member and he tells us that we have to change to the previously discovered local bus in Vinh and I can hardly believe it, there are still about 60 KM to the rough destination. Now we are the only Europeans in the bus and we are kindly admired, passengers get on and off, the landscape remains gray and dusty villages and houses can be seen, but also a lot of green and plenty of animals in the water, mainly birds, white cranes and impressive water buffaloes!

I am also using my offline navigation in parallel and I realize that we are taking a detour, by now we have been on the road for 22 hours instead of the expected 17 hours, so I ask the ticket seller if we are going to the center of Vinh and show him my phone, now everyone gapes... some try to help, others laugh, especially an old man behind me finds the situation amusing. Oh oh I feel anger rising in me and turn to him and laugh artificially at him, well sometimes you make a fool of yourself as a traveler, it doesn't matter, another passenger kindly tries to communicate in his sparse English and lets me know that we are going through the villages to the city center. Okay, and a little later the old Viet Cong veteran gets off and there are still about 30 km to go.

3 new small gentlemen get on and greet, standing with their feet on our luggage, and it becomes clear to me that in the countryside most Vietnamese people are rather disrespectful and I have to shove their legs off our luggage until they get off.

Then we arrive in the center of Vinh and indicate our exit to the driver, and he says goodbye in a friendly manner.

Now we walk 2 km with our almost 60 kg of luggage, but with breaks and after sitting for so many hours, this is welcome. We find a hotel, but we are bothered by the fact that there is no breakfast, so we go to the previously targeted Muong Than Hotel, a skyscraper, where we negotiate a small discount and move in. Nice, a great room with a great bathroom, finally showering 🙄

Recovering from the ride and the march!