We woke up early our second day in Hue to take a tour of the DMZ and the Vinh Moc tunnels, and then got dropped off on the way back at Dong Ha hoping to catch a bus to Vinh.

The tunnels were really fascinating, but most of the tour sucked. While the bus was equipped with air-conditioning, as they had promised, they refused to turn it on. Hot and sweaty women covered in inches of dust and aching from too many hours sitting on the drop seats!! We learned an awful lot about a war that we, as Canadians, had had very little interest in prior. It was an interesting history lesson nonetheless and it's always informative to get it from a perspective that's different from what the media at home throws our way.

When we arrived in Dong Ha they told us the bus was more expensive than we had been quoted earlier in Hue. So we decided to take a train. We paid for sleepers and were looking forward to a nice relaxing ride-ha! Of course when we actually boarded the train it became apparent that there were no sleepers on the vehicle, and we got stuck sitting on hard seats for the 8-hour overnight journey!!

We arrived in the pouring rain and walked for 20 minutes with our packs --the rain must have added serious pounds to them...they couldn't have been that heavy before -- to the most $$ hotel in town at $24 US a night. We figured we deserved one night of luxury after saving a night's accommodation on the train and since it was to be our last night in Vietnam...we splurged. We slept all afternoon and then came down for dinner in the hotel restaurant, but at 3 am it became quite clear that we would not be leaving the following morning. I had become incredibly ill with food poisoning...Cheryl was to follow two days later as I recovered.

I had honestly never been that sick before in my life. Happily the doctor came to the hotel, so I didn't need to go to a hospital. I got put on a steady diet of only congee and electrolytes- mmm yum. The real issue with all this was that our visas were about to expire and we weren't up for the travel. After a long and teary conversation with the Canadian embassy, and a very scary visit to the local police where I spent an hour staring at "that door"--you know the one from the movies where people go in, but never come out…that door--our hotel agreed to sponsor us for a three-day extension.

Needless to say, Cheryl's birthday wasn't particularly enjoyable!! Fun-filled nights and days of vomit, diarrhea and copious amounts of rice goo (congee to you more refined folk) were how we spent our last days. Were we ever getting out of this country?

After much arguing with the entire population of Vinh (the hotel staff, the bus people, the post office workers, the moto drivers, the massage parlor manager, and a small run-in at the university), we booked a private car from the hotel and had a nice drive to the border. The road was really winding in the mountains before Laos, but we managed to hold our cookies (barely). The hotel manager "in charge" of us (visa extension, doctors, etc.) escorted us to the border. He was there to ensure that the procedure was quick and painless, and of course to make sure he was finally rid of us. They didn't ask for more than $1 US to let us through (everyone gets hassled for a bribe) and didn't bother to check our bags. We walked the 1 km of No Man's Land with quite a skip in our step (Yeah! Out of Vietnam!!!), and immigration on the Laos side was easy.

We still had a long and arduous journey to get to the capital, but since we're into a new country, perhaps we'll leave that for the next entry.