This post is to help anyone looking to travel from Vang Vieng Laos to Vientiane Laos to Hanoi Vietnam or any combination of the three destinations. This is a little on the long side but with lots of pictures!
Safe travels everyone.
Tuna Tom
At the time of this writing 1 USD is equivalent to approximately 8,129 LAK aka Kip
The journey I was doing was slated as a 25-30 hour journey from Vang Vieng Laos to Hanoi Vietnam. If you can it is best to break up this journey or better yet fly for around 80-100 US dollars (USD). The total cost in my trip was 220,000 KIP (not including food).
To go from Vang Vieng Laos to Vientiane Laos will cost approximately 50,000 KIP and the journey will take about 4 or 5 hours. There are different buses to take and the one I took is pictured below. There was a flat on it but luckily this was when we were still in town and was easily changed.
Some of the views from this part of the journey
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| Lunch stop 15,000 KIP fried rice with chicken |
The next part of this journey was trying to kill 3 or 4 hours in Vientiane. I walked around the town a bit and took a few pictures. I knew I was going to be stuck on the bus for several hours and went to pick up some food. For 10,000 KIP I bought 2 mangos, several mangosteens and a few rambutans. I also stopped by a restaurant for a big plate of PadThai which was enough for 2 meals for 15,000 KIP.
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| Common to see fruit vendors like this in SE Asia |
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| Fruit for the journey 10,000 KIP |
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| 15,000 KIP |
After waiting around for a long time we were finally on our way to the bus terminal. This part of the journey through traffic took a good hour or more. I was under the assumption we were leaving at 5:00 PM, but we did not leave Vientiane until 7:00 ish.
The following pictures are the sleeper bus and my bunk mate. Majority of the beds are single beds, but unfortunately there are 2 triple beds at the back where we got stuck and it is not fun. I just wanted to give you an idea what it looks like inside, the smell is bad when you are at the back of the bus. As a side note try to bring food with you for the bus ride. Whenever they stop for food if you are hungry or not get something.
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| My British bunk mate named Guy |
We stopped at the border at approximately midnight where they then proceeded to turn the bus off. At around 6:00 am and were woken up by really loud music we got off the bus to head to the Laos border. Border crossings can be a long difficult process in SE Asia I do not have pictures of the borders for security reasons. After a few hours of doing the border crossings we were back on the road for the remainder of the journey. We got to Hanoi around 7:00 PM and had to take a taxi to a hostel. A shower, brushing your teeth, beer and food were truly amazing after.
The following pictures are from the journey which is not easy to do from inside a sleeper bus.
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