Are we there yet?

Hello from Savannakhet. This is our last stop in Laos before we dart across the border to Vietnam. We arrived here after a long, ugly hot bus ride from Vientiane. It was suppose to take 6 hours but wait a sec... This is Laos! It actually took about 10 hours and we stopped to pick up every single person along the road looking for a ride. The bus was not full so they were doing there best to fill it. We also got a flat tire which took about 30 minutes to fix. It must of been like 40 degrees outside and we were dripping in sweat through most of the journey.



It got even worse when we arrived at our "destination". We got off the bus when the driver told us to, saying "Savan, Savan". They offloaded our bags and pointed toward the street. The bus then got back on the road and continued south as its final destination was Pakse further south. Initially we thought we were in Savannakhet and we were tossing as to whether we should walk or take a tuk tuk into town. Normally in south east asia, if you look stupid and have lots of bags somebody will eventually come up and offer to take you somewhere. This rule didn't seem to apply as it seemed like nobody cared about us. We approached a tuk tuk and he started talking lao and showed no interest in taking us anywhere and then he left. Luckily a guy driving by said "Savannakhet?" and we said yeah and quickly got in to the back of the truck. After driving for about 25 minutes, we realised that the bus just dumped us at some other bus stop that was probably over 20km away from Savannakhet!



Anyway, this is rather ordinary here and we are happily in Savannakhet at the moment. There really isn't anything to do so we're just taking it easy before we go to Vietnam. Its pretty quiet here and there aren't many tourists at all. Maybe like 6 of them. The town is filled with old French buildings that have seen better days. Tomorrow our bus leaves for Dong Ha, Vietnam. Not sure what we're going to do next but we'll figure it out soon. - Uriah and Derek