2008 Woodie Awards
Vietnam Border
Xerxes N. Marduk
Issue date: 4/18/07 Section: Opinion
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Dec. 24, 2004
It was a truly epic bus journey from Laos to get to Vietnam today. The day started at 5 a.m. Things were going well enough until I realized that I was waiting for my bus at the wrong station. I waved down a farmer driving a rusty old truck traveling in the direction I knew the other bus station to be in. He stopped for me, and we drove through the pre-dawn streets of Phonsavan- a town of some 15,000 in the dry highlands of Laos-together, speaking not a word in the other's language.
Once the bus was full, we started driving down the dirt road; the driver used the horn like it was a snow plow, clearing a path through the mopeds, bicycles, children, dogs, hogs and cows that littered the road. We must have passed an average of 100 mopeds every hour, which would mean we passed at least 1,700 today. That's not an exaggeration. It's just amazing we didn't hit any.
We were six hours late arriving in Vinh, an unassuming city of 200,000 just inland from the sea along the narrow strip of land connecting northern and southern Vietnam. The Lonely Planet guidebook described Vinh as a "dirty, crime-ridden industrial town best avoided." Somebody forgot to tell Lonely Planet that the only international bus from Phonsavan came here and only here, or the road over the mountains didn't exist at the time of publication, which is the more likely excuse.
I learned there is no such thing as a timetable when there are 101 unpredictable delays on the road coming into Vietnam. Just a few of the things I saw:
Boulders the size of bath tubs in the middle of the road. Solution: Wait until a bulldozer comes and pushes them off the side of the mountain into a deep ravine.
Problem: Maniac dump truck drivers who playfully swerved all over the road when our bus tried to pass them. Solution: Back off and give them some room.
Problem: A parked dump truck in the middle of the road, the driver nowhere to be seen. Solution: Build a bridge of rocks along the edge of the cliff to drive the bus over. I looked on in interest as most of the people got off the bus during this dangerous maneuver, and only after we had safely made it past the truck did I realize how close we had been to falling off a 500 foot cliff.
It was a truly epic bus journey from Laos to get to Vietnam today. The day started at 5 a.m. Things were going well enough until I realized that I was waiting for my bus at the wrong station. I waved down a farmer driving a rusty old truck traveling in the direction I knew the other bus station to be in. He stopped for me, and we drove through the pre-dawn streets of Phonsavan- a town of some 15,000 in the dry highlands of Laos-together, speaking not a word in the other's language.
Once the bus was full, we started driving down the dirt road; the driver used the horn like it was a snow plow, clearing a path through the mopeds, bicycles, children, dogs, hogs and cows that littered the road. We must have passed an average of 100 mopeds every hour, which would mean we passed at least 1,700 today. That's not an exaggeration. It's just amazing we didn't hit any.
We were six hours late arriving in Vinh, an unassuming city of 200,000 just inland from the sea along the narrow strip of land connecting northern and southern Vietnam. The Lonely Planet guidebook described Vinh as a "dirty, crime-ridden industrial town best avoided." Somebody forgot to tell Lonely Planet that the only international bus from Phonsavan came here and only here, or the road over the mountains didn't exist at the time of publication, which is the more likely excuse.
I learned there is no such thing as a timetable when there are 101 unpredictable delays on the road coming into Vietnam. Just a few of the things I saw:
Boulders the size of bath tubs in the middle of the road. Solution: Wait until a bulldozer comes and pushes them off the side of the mountain into a deep ravine.
Problem: Maniac dump truck drivers who playfully swerved all over the road when our bus tried to pass them. Solution: Back off and give them some room.
Problem: A parked dump truck in the middle of the road, the driver nowhere to be seen. Solution: Build a bridge of rocks along the edge of the cliff to drive the bus over. I looked on in interest as most of the people got off the bus during this dangerous maneuver, and only after we had safely made it past the truck did I realize how close we had been to falling off a 500 foot cliff.
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