"Living Hell Is An Understatement"

We left our cozy farmstay to drive the handful of kilometers to Phong Nha town with intentions of catching the overnight sleeper bus with our bikes.

We had to cross the river 3 times. Two of the times were over gorgeous (if slightly vertigo inducing) suspension bridges.

The third river crossing was on a "ferry", which really meant a tiny wooden boat loaded up with people and their bikes.

Here's the "ferry" from another angle.

We were initially told the bus was going to leave around 9pm, but it actually left at 6:30pm. Given that it was about an 8 hour drive to Ninh Binh, where we were heading, this severely skewed our estimated time of arrival. Oh well, I thought, at least I'll be able to get some sleep since we had the whole back seat to ourselves. 

Wrong. Turns out our sleeper bus turns into a party bus, complete with colored lights, risque music videos, and loud, dirty house music. And to top it off, I'm pretty sure our bus driver was auditioning for a part in Mad Max, given the way he was driving.

Guess we should have read the reviews *before* getting on the bus?

No matter. We were dropped off on the side of the road at a gas station just outside Ninh Binh at about 2:30am. The drive to our homestay was deserted and eerie, and tragically no one was awake at 4am when we arrived. We had to huddle together in the cold outside the house until about 6am when someone finally woke up. Not the best way to spend a night, but still better than the brothel in Buon Ho.

The silver lining was that the bus did cut out a substantial number of kilometers that would have taken us 2 full days of riding to do. Plus, we didn't have to pay for a hotel!