Air Travel, South East Asian Style

Well we are sitting pretty in the totally excellent city of Luang Prabang in Laos at the moment after getting all adventurous like and going trekking to a hill tribe for a couple of days. Pretty interesting in itself, but not as interesting as how we ended up in Luang Prabang 3 days earlier than planned...

After having a great time in Vietnam, we'd booked a flight from Hanoi to the Laos capital of Vientiane on the 25th of June. So as planned we said a final farewell to all of our new friends from'Nam and headed off to the airport in Hanoi amidst the usual honking of horns that is background noise in all of Vietnam. Honestly no one can drive a vehicle without a bit of the ol' horn action every, say 2 or 3 seconds.

But I digress; a thing that people may not know about Hanoi is that it's a fantastic city full to the brim of lovely people, with a frothy top thieving bastards trying to grift money off you at any opportunity, lead principly by taxi drivers. In Hanoi there are as many different taxi companies as places selling noodle soup and three quarters of them have dodgy meters, so every time you get in a cab you have to check the meter and threaten the driver with unspeakable acts of violence to ensure you pay a fair rate. We got a taxi from Hang Bac road to the Ho Chi Minh mausoleum (actual distance about 3kms) and the meter rang up 12.5 km's and the driver wanted us to pay 100,000 Dong (about $6). So after a big argument and various accusations in English and Vietnamese we paid 60,000 and cleared off. Other cabs tried the same thing with less success and we were wise to their tricks.

So with our hard won knowledge of Hanoi we thought it prudent to book a transfer to the airport ,which is quite a ways out of town, with a reputable individual. This we did, heading to the airport at 1pm thinking we were done with the place. After a drive at the usual breakneck speed, enough to make Shell carsick, and past things you simply don't expect to see such as 4 different Baguette vendors, all sitting smack bang in the middle of the on ramp for one of the major bridges over the Red River. Think 4 Mr Whippy's parked on the interchange between the Tulla and the Western Ring Road and you will get the idea. Wasn't 1 enough?

Again I've digressed. We got to the airport with plenty of time before our 4pm flight and sat around waiting for the check in counter to open up. And waited. And waited a little more.... Until finally at about 3pm I decided to try and find out what was going on and how come we couldn't check in. I mean, the flight was on the board, but just nothing happening. So I lined up at the ticket counter, waiting about 15 minutes for some girl to place many stamps on many pieces of paper for a non-existent passenger, and finally she said

"The check in counter will come up on the board when they open check in."

Thanks. I know that. That's how every airport in the world works.

"Check in should have opened an hour ago", I say, "the flight leaves in an hour"

"Oh. Maybe you should go and ask someone at the counter over there" and waves at 50% of the airports 70 or so check in counters that were on her right hand side.

"Thanks " I say and set off in search of someone - anyone - who looks like they know whats going on. After wandering around for a bit I found a counter that looked likely with someone sitting there and said

"I'm flying to Vientiane at 4" and then - the same second I swear - the tv screen above her head pops up saying

"Qv322 16:00 Vientiane, cancelled". Then she helpfully informed me that the flight was cancelled. So after a bit of "What?! Why?! " and the like I told her that I really wanted to go and she said,

"well there's a flight to Luang Prabang later and then there's another plane going to Vientiane after that".

"I'll go to Luang Prabang. Anywhere in Laos will be fine" I said.

"Really? Ok then that's easy" she said and I dashed off to get Michelle and the bags.

So we checked in for Luang Prabang and after another hour or two of waiting around for the flight we walked up the boarding gate for our Lao Airlines flight. Since in was the dinkiest little plane ever manufactured we had to get a bus out on to the tarmac so we boarded the bus for our final dive in Vietnam and drove out there, with a completely unnecessary but very jovial honk on the horn from the bus driver we bid adieu to Vietnam and offered our lives to the mercy of the maintenance program of a third world airline.

We survived and landed in Luang Prabang, possibly the nicest city in the Mekong area (And ended up cutting 3 days of unnecessary travel of our trip as well). What a great day! This worked quite well for us as we were flying to Vientiane in order to get a bus to a place called Vang Viene (3 hours), do some white water rafting, and then head to Luang Prabang by bus (8 hours driving). It turns out we could do all the extreme adventure activities in LP and we dodged 11 hours of Karaoke hell in a local bus. [Anyone that has been on a local bus in SE Asia will know what I mean - for everyone else they play these god awful karaoke videos on the buses . It's sort of Bollywood video clips with the words below, in Sanskrit of course, with the sort of music that reinforces the notion of Asia being the continent that rhythm forgot.]

So now it was to infinity and beyond....