March 6th - An explanation

Some time ago I 'complained' that we weren't spending more than one night in two capitals, Vientiane and Hanoi. I now know why this happened.

Wendy and I had a chat with John Brown at breakfast yesterday before we left Sapa, and raised this with him. Here is his answer. Originally, the tour was not going into Vietnam because the authorities very rarely allow foreign cars into the country. Added to this is their reluctance to allow RH drive cars to use their roads. (Seeing how diabolical the driving standards are here, I cannot imagine why this should be a problem for them!) As a result of this, the tour was going to skirt Vietnam by going north from Laos into China and then, more or less due east, to Macau. Then, due to the efforts of the travel company, Diethelm, the tour was allowed in to Vietnam. This meant that the time we had in the country was limited to the extra days we would have had in China, skirting Vietnam. This meant only one night in Hanoi was possible.

Vientiane was a different situation. The border crossing into Laos was meant to close at 5pm and John did not think that it was possible for everyone to get to the border by 5pm. So, the day was planned to finish on the Thai side of the border, not in Vientiane. It was then discovered that the border would remain open till 10pm, on payment of an overtime fee! When he learnt this, he changed the overnight stay to Vientiane. The result being, we did at least have a reasonable chance to see the city.

I think this gives an idea of the problems JB and his team have to overcome to stage an event like this.