264. | A bus where only the ceiling was free

This story began on Friday.

The departure to Vietnam was scheduled for that day.

I built my entire day around this.

Then the bus was canceled in the afternoon. That ended the previous post.

And that’s how it is.

My penultimate day in Laos

Actually, some things happened on my last two days that I still smile about.

On my penultimate day, I went to a restaurant near my accommodation in the morning and had already been there.

As always, I ordered rice with chicken. This is done by pointing to the name of the dish on the menu due to communication differences. On the left side in Lao, on the right side in English. There were no pictures on that menu.

So, I point to the name of the dish, smile and wait for my wonderful rice.

After a while, the chicken served with boiled vegetables arrives. There is no sign of rice.

I swim with the flow at all times, so I ate what was put in front of me with relish. I didn’t complain, because there was no reason. I’ll order better next time.

With this thought in mind, I went to another restaurant in the evening. The same menu was waiting there too. There are no pictures, just two columns of names of dishes. I show in both languages that I would like to have rice with chicken. Smiles on both sides, then waiting.

My dinner will arrive soon. A huge bowl of soup, with lots of noodles. Rice is not even over the horizon.

The next morning I asked two AI models a little about the reason for the misunderstanding. I suspected that maybe the locals I ordered from couldn’t read.

The AI said that wasn’t the reason. It’s more that the punctuation marks only contain a thought form of what the dish is meant to mean, or the English translation is wrong. But it’s also possible that they simply bring after the order what they think is appropriate for the evening.

By the morning of my last day, I had trained myself to be a trickster. I learned the phrase “khao pad kai,” which means fried chicken with rice.

It worked. I didn’t mess around with the menu, I casually ordered myself some rice. Which arrived as rice.

I’m glad I found this simple solution for my last day!

My penultimate last day in Laos

The title is a bit tricky, isn’t it?

Yes, because I didn’t plan to live in Laos at all on this Sunday.

Well, it’s clear now that the plan is mine.

The rest is not up to me.

I spent my last day in three places, after leaving the room I had occupied the night before in 2 minutes.

I spent the first half of the day in a cafe with my orange coffee.

Then, using my knowledge of Lao, I bought delicious rice.

Finally, I sat in a Cafe Amazon until the evening.

I love how experiences catch my breath in the most unexpected places. I didn’t expect any big surprises in a Western-style cafe.

I worked peacefully at the table by the front door, listened to my own music, and waited for the closing bell to head to my bus. Nothing special.

Then, around seven in the evening, a small family sat down on the other side of the big door. Grandparents, parents, a little girl sitting on one arm, and a princess.

The little princess had a birthday. A very cute little cake was given to the little girl with the crown, who was walking around in a very cute princess dress.

The little girl looked at me several times, curiously, and I waved to her and smiled at her. It was nothing, but I felt so good. I immediately thought of my two little princesses. How many such beautiful moments we had, and what happy moments there were always around such cute cakes.

But the moment flew by, I kept working. Until my mother put a slice of cake in front of me… I couldn’t spit or swallow. I felt so stupid, I couldn’t do anything but put my hand over my heart and say thank you a few times.

This little family took me back to the time of princesses. The trip was really good. I love time travel.

Waiting for the bus

After the journey to the past, a journey to the future awaited me.

I arrived at the Hotel at 8:30 PM, where I had to board the bus.

I waited for 10:30 PM, but the last coffee shop also closed at 8:30 PM, so my plan was to sit there in the parking lot for two hours. Those 120 minutes would pass quickly. Especially in good company. (Of course, I was alone.)

There were already two sleeping buses parked there, so around 9:30 PM I wrote to my contact. I sent him a picture of one of the buses and asked if it was my bus.

I was very happy because he immediately replied yes. Yay. Then 5 seconds later the next message came: no-no. Fuck it! Don’t be happy for long.

He wrote that he would ask the driver where he was and when they would pick me up, and let me know.

An hour later he wrote that the bus was a little late. Instead of 10:30 PM, it would arrive between 4 and 5 AM. A little. Late.

5.5 – 6 hours late. I don’t know in which world this delay is a little. Maybe here in Asia it really isn’t that much.

I lay down comfortably on the concrete, which was pleasantly warm even at 11 PM.

It’s interesting how quickly you get used to things that would otherwise be unthinkable when you have no choice.

I talked a lot on the phone, and I enjoyed how slowly time passed. I tried to sleep, but somehow I couldn’t sleep.

Instead, the rain came. Not gently, but in the usual way here, it started to pour very heavily. I had to take shelter under the half-roof of the hotel, where the rain only slightly peeked at me.

I would be lying if I said that those few hours passed quickly. I couldn’t sleep, and with the rain coming, I couldn’t sit either. I spent the last two hours standing, huddled against the wall.

But finally the bus arrived.

On the bus

Imaginations and expectations are always – and I’m starting to understand that – really always are misleading.

Based on the featured image in the post “Preparing for Vietnam“, I expected something like this for the inside of the bus:

Instead, I got this:

The whole bus was an overcrowded tin can. There were beds, one next to the other at waist height on the right side of the bus, and one on the other side. But they were all already taken.

The bottom of the bus was covered with mattresses. And there were people lying everywhere. Under the beds, in the corridor. Only the ceiling was empty.

I was a little afraid that I wouldn’t have a place to sleep.

That was half the story. I really didn’t have a bed. However, as soon as I got on the bus, I was immediately taken to the back of the vehicle. There was an unfortunate Asian man sleeping under one of the beds. The driver gently kicked him and told him to get out of there, because that was my seat.

Although I felt very sorry for the man, I took the seat assigned to me. I was already a little sleepy, so I made myself comfortable and immediately fell asleep.

I made myself comfortable.

I can tell you this in the next picture. The mattress – as you can see in the featured image of the post – was not very big. In fact, it was only slightly larger than the size of my laptop bag. This mattress was about 1 meter long and 40-45 cm wide.

I curled up on it, with my backpack in the crook of my legs.

I didn’t get a pillow or blanket either. I was prepared for this anyway, so I had my towel and my only sweater with me, which together could make a comfortable pillow.

I woke up first thing in the morning.

The first thing I saw was a face, 10 centimeters from mine. A guy was sleeping peacefully. The man who had been kicked aside in the night was using my leg as a pillow. The third, whose head sometimes touched mine, was putting his hand on my head in his sleep.

So, we were a bit crowded. This did not change during the day. I could never stretch my legs because there was always someone there. Once a man sat on my mattress, taking advantage of the space left by the curve of my stomach. I told him that he shouldn’t do that, just as I had to tell my head neighbor, who had been transferring his pillow to my side a few times, that he should.

I couldn’t sit up on my bed because the bed above my head would have been at the height of my neck.

So I spent the 15 hours on the bus curled up on my right side. If I wanted to turn to my left side, my body had so little support that at every turn I almost flew into people in the passenger compartment. I didn’t risk it.

If I had wanted to lie on my back, I would only be able to do it with my knees drawn up, so I didn’t force it either.

But, at least it turned out that I can spend 15 hours lying on my right side.

The bus stopped twice. Once for a meal, and once for a pee break.

I’ll forget, of course we stopped at the border too.

Fortunately – for the first time – the border crossing went smoothly. They fined me 100,000 LAK because my visa expired on Sunday and it was already Monday. But I expected that.

There was no corruption, I didn’t have to give the border guards any money. In return, they checked twice that as a Hungarian I really didn’t need a visa. It’s good that they also came to the conclusion that I didn’t. Because the girl in front of me was simply sent back to Laos, because as a citizen of her country she should have.

There was no sign of the promised wifi on the bus – nor of my bed. My mobile internet didn’t work, even though I had bought my eSIM card well in advance.

In retrospect, I think we must have been on roads where there was no internet. I can’t say for sure. Because when I said the bus was a tin can, I meant it literally.

From the floor where I spent my 15 hours, you couldn’t see out of the bus. But if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to, because the windows were cleverly covered with foil.

In summary, I think I can say that the trip was quite bleak.

When we stopped for lunch, I was a little confident that we did so because the bus ticket includes one meal.

I was wrong. It soon turned out that I could buy myself some food if I wanted.

I wouldn’t have lacked willpower, let alone money. I had never bought foreign currency in advance before, and I didn’t now either. So I just watched other people eat.

A guy came up to me and told me to eat. I told him I didn’t have any money. He left, but after half a minute he came back and gave me 40,000 VND. Dong is the name of the money here, and it’s just as worthless as KIP. That is, he pressed a 500 HUF, 2 USD worth of money into my hand.

I asked him – after I thanked him – why he gave it to me? I don’t know, that’s all he said and he disappeared. That way I could eat a nice chicken rice.

Then later on, the guy whose face I woke up with in the morning woke me up later in the evening because he and his friend were eating boiled eggs and he thought I would eat one too. He was right. I accepted it gratefully and we ate the delicious boiled eggs together.

Arrival in Hanoi

We finally arrived in Hanoi before eight o’clock in the evening.

I hadn’t even gotten off the bus (literally!) when three taxi drivers asked me if I needed a taxi.

Stop, good people! I don’t even know where the front of the cart is.

Towards the end of the trip, I was thinking about how I was going to solve the task before me without the internet.

I can’t find accommodation without the internet. I can’t even leave the station if I don’t have a map. I can’t even withdraw money because I need internet to add money to my Wise card.

My only chance was to find free wifi somewhere. Because I can’t even pay for a coffee until I have internet.

Luckily, the internet came to Hanoi. So I set off. Somewhere.

After a 2 km walk and two Google Maps misinformation, I found a working ATM. There, a man was playing Monopoly. He was withdrawing the maximum amount of money from the ATM one after another.

I patiently waited for the 15 minutes while he collected the approximately 30 cm thick bundle of money in his hand.

I also played millionaire: I withdrew 1,000,000 VND.

Afterwards I had a good coffee. I booked a hotel. I was able to call a Grab taxi.

And at around 10 pm I was able to throw off my dirty clothes on the eighth floor of a hotel.

Hanoi! Vietnam! I arrived.

The fourth country and approximately the thirtieth accommodation since I left Hungary.

And this is still only the first step of my journey.

I happily fell asleep. I dreamed of new adventures.

Even when awake…