Buses and Baguettes

As I stepped on board the bus, armed with two baguettes, I was happy to realize the relative comfort my 12 hour bus ride from Hanoi, Vietnam toward northern Laos would provide.  Unlike many other Southeast Asia backpack style travelers, I have greatly avoided long bus rides at any cost because of my highly motion sensitive tummy.  But as this was an overnight sleeper bus with fully horizontal bunks, I figured I could pop a Dramamine, put on my headphones and awake that much closer to realizing my recent dream of exploring Laos by riverboat. 

...but anything that helps me to sleep on long bus rides is OK :)  There were many signs like
 this one, sponsored by the German government, nearing the Vietnam/Laos border.

Unfortunately, although the bus looked and felt fairly modern, that didn’t penetrate to the engine itself.  I awoke at 11pm wondering why I was feeling highly claustrophobic and realized it was because the bus was stopped, engine off, meaning no air conditioning, and no opening windows, ahhh!  We were broken down.  I struggled out of my bunk to towards the front door as quickly and quietly as I could which was not an easy task as there were many people sleeping in the aisles.  Many forms of transportation in this part of the world employ “the bus is never full” rule and fit as many humans as possible for the ride to make more money.  My apologies to any random Vietnamese whose faces I may have stepped on while trying to reach the front door. 

Some cute kids, content to play with their squash, until the
excitement of a broken down bus came along.

After much banging and clanking by the driver on the rear part of the engine, which everyone else seemed to sleep through, we were on the road again.  But this scene repeated itself several more times at 1am, 5am, and 7am.  At one point the engine quit going over a pass, stranding us on a 9% incline on a blind corner.  Here I disembarked again and enjoyed watching the Hmong women with their long, black, beautiful hair walk and buzz by on motor bikes with the morning produce and a few pigs. 

We finally reached our destination on for that leg of the trip, albeit 6 hours late.  We arrived in Dien Bien, Vietnam (about 90 km from the Laos border) at 10am, 5 hours after I was supposed to have connected with another bus that would take me directly across the border to meet up with my travel companion and enjoy some river time.  I tried not to be too disappointed and thankfully found a guesthouse right across the street from the bus station where I could wash the journey off of me and figure out what there was to explore in this town I knew nothing about, and that apparently received very few foreign visitors.

A little friend I made in Dien Bien.

Dien Bien, I learned, is known for a famous battle where the French colonial forces were defeated in 1954.  This is one of the most remote parts of Vietnam and the region is very beautiful.   A random Vietnamese guy who befriended me on the bus with a bit of English offered to show me around as he was in town on business, something to do with concrete is all I could surmise.  We visited a cemetery, had tea with a local family that he was friends with, explored underground trenches, bunkers, and bomb sites.  So an unexpected delay turned out not so bad after all.   

Downtown Dien Bien.