Unfortunately, because we wanted to spend a good 2 weeks in Laos, we had to hightail it out of Hanoi by bus, and what a bus it was! It was a gloriously long 12 hour drive, so we took a sleeper bus that left at 5:30pm, but we arrived super early since the woman at our guesthouse insisted that it would take at least an hour. Twenty minutes later we were there! Sleeper buses in Vietnam are quite interesting things. There are 3 rows of bed-seats in 2 levels along the entire length of the bus, with two aisles in between. The seats in the back are all connected, lending itself to more of a slumber party type atmosphere. However, the BEST part of the bus was the entertainment provided.
Problem: What in the world are we going to do for 90min while we wait for the bus to depart?
Solution: Oggle the boobies and hoohoos on the Ibiza party video (think “Girls Gone Wild) playing on a huge screen directly in front of Ryan at one million decibels, while enjoying the dance party lights running the length of the bus.
Ryan = happy camper. Cori = intrigued for 5min then annoyed.
Luckily, when the bus started rolling, they turned off the jubblies. Unluckily, they replaced them with really old and horribly over-the-top gory Chinese Kung-Fu movies (think hand punches through chest and pulls out heart) dubbed in Vietnamese, using the same woman’s voice for all the characters. I’m still not sure which videos I preferred.
Ryan enjoying the show on our party bus
Being the only white folk on the bus with no English speakers in sight, when we stopped at 9pm at a rundown roadside shack in the middle of nowhere for food and wees, things got a bit confusing. After weeing in a concrete room with the other ladies (OK, just me, not Ryan), we were beckoned to join the others at the tables for food, which they all seemed to be sharing. We assumed we’d have to pay for the meal, and since we had brought our own food, we declined. They continued to insist and we continued to decline. Finally we sat at a table to wait for the bus to go and were brought 2 individual meals. Turns out the meals were included in the price of the bus ticket. So what it ended up looking like, was that we were just too cool to join the others at the communal tables! Oops!
Eight hours after the meal debacle, we arrived at our destination, Dien Bien Phu, the gateway town to the Laos border and site of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954 of the First Indochina War. Here the French were defeated by Viet Minh communist national revolutionaries. However, we were dead asleep and didn’t actually realize we had arrived until about 20min later after everyone had already disembarked. As we groggily stepped off the bus and grabbed our luggage, we watched the bus to Laos pull away, leaving us stuck in DBP until the next day. Hoorah! Good bus times.
We slept for a few hours at a guest house across the road where “social evils are not permitted in the room” on some springs held together by thin cotton and then decided to embrace the city. This is what we saw when the city woke up from its 2 hour mid-day siesta:
Fixin’s for breakfast pho
Downtown Dien Bien Phu
Steps leading to the Statue of Victory
View of Dien Bien Phu
D1 hill, French defence site
Along main street
Military cemetery
Names of those who died
After our sightseeing, while we were enjoying a disgusting salty lemon drink and some sort of gross melony beverage, a lovely Taiwanese artist-cyclist befriended us and we spent the evening together drinking bia hoi by the river and admiring his water-colour art. One of the employees took a liking to Ryan’s sunnies and strutted his stuff lookin’ cool as.
Time in DBP well-spent!
Red, White & Lost 