Monday Tracy and I actually landed in Hanoi, not Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam. Kind of the difference between Florida and Maine. So that's a good start.
We are freezing, got off the plane in flip flops and shorts to the Vietnamese people in the airport pointing and laughing at us, we really expected to be in the South but didnt realize until we were literally standing in the airport in Bangkok that we were actually headed for Hanoi in the north.
In Hanoi, we stayed in the Old Quarter, the street markets were madness.
We watched a woman strangle a turtle to death while her partner, squatting next to her on the sidewalk, butchered another turtle for sale. We also saw dog meat for sale, and have a pretty sick picture of dog heads on the butcher's block. 
The local currency, by the way, is the dong, which did lead to my unfortunate statement in front of a grocery store checker: "I hope they take credit card so that I don't have to pull out my dong".Motorbikes are EVERYWHERE, and everyone honks, just, constantly. People drive whichever direction they want on whatever side of the street they want, and the two stoplights we did see are just blatantly ignored. Tracy and I learned that the only way to cross the street is to just start walking, staring down the hordes of motorbikes screaming at you, and hope they don't try to take you out.
After our dinner, we hit a pub where we met Tim, an Australian ex-pat who has been teaching English in Vietnam for 3 years. He agreed to meet us the next day, and give us a small tour of the city (and buy our lunch of frog legs!).
After checking out a water puppet show (the puppeteers stand waist deep in water!) we went back to our hostel to catch our night bus to Hue. We were transported to the "sleeper bus" we had booked, and this is where the travels started getting interesting. There were approximately 50 of us standing on the corner looking at this bus, which had maybe 10 seats left. We could do the math, so we ran to the luggage rack, tossed it on, and elbowed our way on to the bus. The bus was insane- 3 sleeper seats across, 2 levels high, and in the very back were the only two remaining seats- on the second level, slammed against 3 others. We climbed in next to what would be our bunkmakes for the next 14 hours- James, Tara and Allen, all students from Australia. We climbed up, and I shook hands with James, saying "hi, I should introduce myself, since we'll apparently be spooning tonight". Immediately, the bus driver turns on blaring club music, and starts honking merrily away.
After playing a couple of card games, we all eventually fell asleep, elbow to elbow with our new bunkmakes, and woke up at 4 am to our driver honking continuously. And I know I like to exaggerate, but this is no exaggeration- he honked constantly for at least 4 hours straight. I'm not sure how he had the stamina. It sounded like he was trying to communicate via morse code to the road.
We eventually stopped in Dong Ha for some breakfast, and Tracy and I took our chance to leave the bus and travel straight to the Lao Bao border rather than traveling down to Hue and having to travel back up. Our driver calls his "friend" who will drive us in a "bus" to Lao Bao, where we'll transfer to another bus.
5 minutes later, a rusted out van pulls up and they start yelling at us to hurry up. We load on, and watch as the driver peals around Dong Ha, screaming "Lao Bao!" to everyone we pass on the street (honking the whole way, of course). As if he's hoping that we'll just drive past someone thinking "man, I'd like to get to Lao Bao, I hope someone drives by offering a ride!" I wish I had a picture of this ridiculous van, but I was too scared of the driver (and our other passengers- one woman with fingers on only one hand, one who sat eating some sort of seed and spitting the shells on me while staring at Tracy and I, and at one point up to 5 people sitting in 3 seats, feet propped up on boxes, bags and groceries).
We got to the Lao Bao border, unloaded, and wandered to the gate, not exactly sure what the next stop would be, or if our "tickets to Savannakhet" were even legit. A woman ran up to us, pointed down the road, told us "take motorbike one kilometer, then bus!", hopped on a separate motorbike, and disappeared. So we got our passports stamped, walked down the road, hopped on the backs of two motorbikes, packs and all, and did just that- a kilometer down the road, we stopped at the "bus station" (the picture is fantastic- it's basically just a wood hut) where an open-air bus awaited us.
Our only extended stop was for small girls to hop on the bus and try to sell us corn on the cob and some sort of meat on a stick (again, I have a picture, and if you can tell me what kind of meat it is, you're better at this game than I am).
Now we're in Savannakhet, and it's so peaceful here compared to Hanoi that I already feel by blood pressure dropping.
Our wallets are currently filled with this:
The exchange rates are very hard to keep track of:
Thailand- 31 Baht to 1 US Dollar
Vietnam- 16,000 Dong to 1 US Dollar
Laos- 9,000 Kip to 1 US Dollar
So it appears as if we have loads of money when actually its worth shit.
-Posted by Katie
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