we ended up on a local bus for over 30 hours with clawed vermin from laos stacked all along the middle aisle atop of chicken and pig feed. we stopped for food three times within the first ten hours of the trip, spending a good four hours at the third stop. as we moved towards vietnam the temperature dropped dramatically. luckily we bought a beautiful three dollar blanket prior to the bus ride.
after being on the bus for an incalculable amount of time, the six foreigners aboard were herded off to check out of loas and into vietnam. this process requires mindless shuffling of your feet and forfeiting of random dollars so that certain customs officers can have extra cigarettes or a nicer piece of fish for dinner. the vietnamese border crossing resembled wild animals fighting over the last dough nut or iphone or tickle me elmo. on top of this mindfuck, all i had to keep me warm was our three dolala blanket. it served me well, but the teeth chattered endlessly none the less.
after crossing, or avoiding getting left beehind by our bus, we went back to looking eternity in the eyeballs. we finally arrived in hanoi around 11pm, avoided getting ripped off too bad, ate smelly noodle, and slept in a very nice, yet unheated 19 dollar a night room with free breakfast buffet and internet.
we got a space heater, took bubble baths, ate pringles and chocolate bars, drank lots of cokes, and hibernated in front of mtv, hbo, cnn, and more. vietnam has a beautiful selection of pirated dvds. box sets of every episode of friends, seinfeld, southpark, and so on for under ten bucks. any dvd for a dollar, or 16,000 dong rather, as well as single disc dvd sets with 16 movies for under two bucks. i had to restrain myself. also purchased, a bunch of pipes, various bottles of cobra/ scorpion winee, bamboo bowls and chopsticks, fake raybans, etc. went to a "world famous" water puppet show that was bullshit.
we got plane tickets back to bangkok for 100 dollars, only to find out that you can get them for 30. didn't fucking matter, it would have take us over 100 dollars and around 3 days to get back by other means.
so, back in bangkok. the familiarity is comfortable. getting over the sniffles and various bugs, once again, ready to indulge in the readiness of this pre-aligned backpacker's paradise. very serious thoughts on eating mcdonalds, burger king, and subway, very soon. so fucking shoot me, i'm a human being with no will power or sense of culture or whatever. i have four words for you: meatball sub, bigmac, long chicken sandwich, whopper jr. with cheese. i feel so good just thinking about it.
ps: we forgot that saint of a blanket in vietnam. rip, you were worth every fucking cent.
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