vietnam border officer 1 – 0 david
fuck it! now i’m pissed off …
after spending two nice days in hue, i got on my bike and headed west to the laos border. the border town is called lao bao. i arrived there in the early afternoon and settled in to a hotel for the evening. it’s a long trip across the border to savannakhet, so i decided to wait until the next day and make an early start.
i arrived at the border at around 8.30am the next morning … only to be told by a belligerent border guard that i wasn’t permitted to take my motorcycle into laos. while we were having this discussion, at least 20 vietnamese took their motorbikes across, but apparently i’m special.
he told me some crap about needing a transportation permit. knowing that i couldn’t win, i left. i rode 80kms to dong ha and headed to the transport department. they had no idea what a transportation permit was. they were friendly, but unhelpful, and suggested i try the customs department (which was three streets away).
the customs department had no idea and were equally unhelpful.
furious at the retarded bureaucracy, i left dong ha and headed north. whilst on the highway i deliberated whether to try crossing at a different border point or continuing on to hanoi … i decided to go to hanoi. i’m not wasting my time jumping through hoops that people just invent on a whim.
there’s no damn permit for taking a bike across the border (that i know of) and nobody online has ever mentioned needing a permit … the pricks at lao bao just wanted to throw their power around, to make up for their tiny dicks … i’d heard that lao bao was a somewhat bureaucratic crossing point, but i had no idea it was so bad … i tried to bullshit and bluff my way across, but he wasn’t buying it.
well, fuck them. i’m in hanoi now and i’ll sell the bike. then i’ll go to laos by bus and spend 10-12 days hanging about in the north. i’ve discovered that the plain of jars is very accessible (half way between luang prabang and the vietnam border) and i’m very keen to get there.
the bullshit at the lao bao border has really soured a great trip to vietnam.
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