Keilty's Travels: Serpentine Smugglers- Border Crossing Laos to Vietnam: December 16, 2006

He Said:

In theory, taking a night bus sounds like a brilliant budget travellers technique. You are able to fall asleep in luxurious reclining seats after enjoying a succulent and enormously satisfying meal while watching a few newly released Hollywood blockbusters. Ten hours later you wake up well rested in your desired destination ready to explore the town, while saving money on a nights lodging.

In reality, you fall asleep in ten minute intervals (if you are lucky), the only food you receive is what you find nestled in the cracks of your seat, which reclines a maximum of 5 degrees (with a strong enough push) for your sleeping displeasure, the storage compartment for your baggage is located on your lap, the movie is a poorly pirated copy of a Jean Claude Van Dam film, the ten hour trip takes closer to twenty because of flat tires, engine trouble and driver fatigue, you miss all the scenery because it is pitch dark and upon arrival at your destination you find the first available guesthouse that has a vacancy and proceed to sleep for the next 16 hours.

We were even more hesitant than usual to take a night bus after reading the numerous reports and warnings in our travel books and on-line about the shootings and bombings that have occurred on various buses in the areas we would be travelling through. Unfortunately, the only bus traveling from Pakse, Laos to Hue, Vietnam was a night bus. We rationalized that bus rides during the day are just as vulnerable as bus rides at night, not to mention that we did not have too many other options. So, after twiddling our thumbs for eight hours at the bus station we were ready, with some trepidation, to find our seats on the bus. This is where the adventure began...

Moments after the bus rolled into the station we were hurriedly waved over to the bus, pushed on with all of our bags and then they aggressively motioned for us to go to the back of the bus. Unfortunately, we were not able to walk to our seats because the aisle in the bus had 100 pound bags of rice stacked four high. With our overloaded backpacks on our backs and our day packs strapped to our chests, we had to crawl, literally, on our hands and knees over the enormous bags of rice to our unofficially assigned seats in the back, with the onlookers exchanging impatient glances and motioning for us to hurry up. We eventually made it to the back of the bus, which, to be accurate, was not actually the back of the bus. In order to accommodate the ridiculous amount of goods being transported, they had removed the seats in the back half of the bus to allow more space for rice, luggage, bags of clothes and various other unidentifiable objects.

Our seat had been pushed so close to the seat in front of it, it was physically impossible for us to sit together without having to have our knees surgically removed from our chests when we attempted to get up. We sat with our knees embedded under our arm pits for about three minutes before Jen turned to me with her all too familiar look and informed me that there was no way she would be staying on this bus. I did my best to empathize with her and assured her that I shared in her pain and then asked her what alternative plan she had. No words followed but she did provide me with some rather informative facial expressions and hand gestures. With that, I got up out of the seat and sat on the stacks of rice looming precariously a few feet above our seat, which were as comfortable to my undernourished gluteal region as an uneven, rocky concrete slab. Jen was then able to sit sideways in the seat allowing her feet to actually make contact with the ground, while everyone else on the bus managed to comodere two seats for themselves for their sleeping pleasure and comfort.

The chain smoking throughout the bus began as soon as the wheels started rolling out of the bus station. Everyone on the bus appeared to know one another as they all talked together in Vietnamese and shared their food as the two falangs looked on, salivating. If they were a big happy family, we were the uninvited distant relatives that no one cared to talk about, or to.

The rhythm of the ride developed an unsettling pace right away. We roared down the road attaining speeds that hovered around one half of the speed limit, a first for us while traveling by bus in Southeast Asia. About every 45 minutes the bus driver would pull over, turn off the engine and the lights (inside and outside) and spend about fifteen minutes walking around the bus with three other male passengers all taking turns banging on the wheel wells. They proceeded to get back on the bus and we resumed our breakneck pace until another 45 minutes lapsed and he would repeat the bizarre ritual, again and again and again. This is how it went for about 5 hours until we blew a tire. After about 2 hours of commotion in the darkness on a barren stretch of road, the tire was replaced and we were on our way. We drove for another hour before stopping again in the middle of nowhere, with no sign of lights or life to be found for miles. The moment the engine was turned off there was a flurry of activity. All the passengers started reaching for bags under their seats and buried in the back of the bus.

The woman sitting in the seat directly in front of us, inexplicably turned around facing us, pushed Jen off to the side and climbed into the seat with her. Jen was shocked to the point of not knowing what to say or do. This woman proceeded to pull a screwdriver from her pocket and began unscrewing the air vents above the seat. Once opened, she reached back over her seat and grabbed her mesh bag filled with enormous and very real snakes. One by one she pushed them up into the air vents above our seat. After the entire bag full of snakes was transferred to its new resting place, above our heads, the woman gave us an unconcerned and slightly amused smile. At the same time the other passengers on the bus were also stuffing snakes up into their air vents while others were busy stuffing some other foreign objects into the bottom bags of rice. To our untrained eyes, it looked like small bags of drugs, but perhaps they were just smuggling high grade flour from the foothills of Laos into Vietnam. Jen and I exchanged looks that shared our thoughts better than any of the words that were failing to come out of our mouths. We both agreed that at the first sign of a town or village, we would jump off the bus and figure out our way to the border from there.

Once all the contraband was stowed away to their liking, the bus started moving again. Progress towards the border was short lived. After 45 minutes on the road, the driver felt the need for a power nap. He stopped in the middle of the deserted road, not bothering to pull off to the side, turned off the engine and all the lights and crawled towards the back of the bus. He made a small space for himself in the storage area in the back of the bus by climbing up over our large backpacks and then kicking both of them out of that space and directly onto my head with not a word or gesture made. I wanted to shake my head in amazement, unfortunately, I was unable to move my neck at that point and my attempts to fasten a cervical collar from the straps of my backpack failed miserably.

Less than twenty minutes had passed when out of the black nothingness at 3:00 a.m., a motorbike with two passengers slowly glided passed our bus. Moments later, we could hear the motorbike turning around and coming back towards the bus. This time they passed by much more slowly, carefully peering inside the darkened bus loaded with cargo and a handful of wide-eyed passengers and a pair of confused looking falangs. They sped off down the road and disappeared into the darkness. All the passengers seemed panic stricken for the first time on this ride. They woke the driver and he immediately raced to his seat and had the bus started and moving almost instantly. We made it down the road no more than a few hundred yards when we saw lights from a stationary motorbike go on, and then another light, and then another. A few men standing in the middle of the road with something dangling from their shoulders motioned for the bus to pull over. As we got closer we could clearly see six men armed with submachine guns in their hands and pointing them at the bus. Two men boarded the bus looking around and pointing their guns in every direction. It felt like they were there for two hours interrogating each of us with their blank stares fixed just above the barrel of their guns. In actuality, it was no more than two minutes, but two of the longest minutes of our lives. It is hard to describe how it felt at that moment except to say that I truly thought we were all going to be killed and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. It was a profoundly sickening feeling that I will never forget and hope never to have again.
A few loud, angry words were exchanged between these men and the driver. Moments later, the driver went to his seat, started the engine and slowly began driving away as the men outside kept their eyes and guns pointed squarely at the bus.

I am not exactly sure when we started breathing again, but that first breath of air alongside our serpentine smugglers was sweet, although a bit labored. Jen and I did not say anything to each other, for the simple reason that there was nothing to say. What could we say? We were still alive although in a bit of shock.

Our decision to ditch our bus at the border was made easy for us, as our bus driver was just as eager to ditch us and had already made arrangements for us to get on another bus. We felt such a sense of relief to step off of that bus and away from our traveling nightmare. We stared at each other in disbelief and relief as we walked towards the border.

This story ends where another begins as we arrived at the border only to discover that my visa was not valid until the next day. We would not be crossing the border on this day.

She Said:

We have accumulated a variety of amusing transportation stories during our journey, however, I think our night bus ride from Paske, Laos to the Vietnam border will go down in my journal as the most frightening experience. I am knocking on wood that there will not be another to top this one.

I briefly told our story to my family on the phone a few days ago but I failed to mention all the details for fear my Mother may have a stroke. It is hard for me to explain exactly how it felt to be awake for twenty-one hours, nervous that no one knew our where abouts, thinking this is not how I want to die and then to have a woman two feet in front of me pull out of nowhere mesh bags filled with very large and very much alive snakes! She then proceeded to casually, without asking permission, step over the seat, sit half in my lap, unscrew the air-conditioner vents and miraculously shove the former mentioned reptiles into the vents that were directly above my head!!! I could not even pray at that point since I was in utter shock as to what was unfolding before my eyes.

You would think the idea of live snakes resting above my head would keep me from falling off into a deep sleep as we started our journey again but in reality it was not that but rather the Laos men who stopped our bus and boarded with the largest guns I have ever seen and just stared at us. Speechless and terrified, I did not know if it was a blessing or a curse to be a falang! What followed after they left the bus, I do not know, but I am alive to write this story so I guess the appropriate money was exchanged.

We reached the border before daylight and waited for it to open. We were ecstatic to hear that the people on our bus arranged for us to take a separate V.I.P. minivan to our destination in Vietnam. Great, our prayers had been answered and we were one step closer to getting some sleep after the past 26 hours of traveling. Our sigh of relief was cut short as we were soon informed that Matt's Vietnam visa was not valid until the next day and we would have to wait at the border until then to enter the country...but that's another story.

Keilty's Travels

Travelogue

Serpentine Smugglers- Border Crossing Laos to Vietnam: December 16, 2006

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