23 hour bus ride to Laos

Yes. It was just as sketchy as it sounds. The first "sleeper" bus left Hue city in central Vietnam at 5:30 in the evening. I say "sleeper" because it may have been a sleeper for some people, but Vietnamese people are a lot smaller than I am. The bed only fit up to my mid-calf, and since there was another bed right in front of me, I was pretty crunched up. Not to mention the window next to me was ajar, so cold mountain air was blasting in my face all night. Still, that was the comfortable part of the journey... At 1 am the bus drops us off at a "rest stop" in the middle of the mountains somewhere along the border to wait for another bus to take us across the border to Laos. The rest stop consisted of a little restaurant and a parking lot. After the bus driver promised Jenny he would wait until the second bus arrived, he hopped back on the bus and they drove off into the distance. Fortunately the second bus did arrive; unfortunately it was a sitting bus that would have had enough leg room for someone 5'2" and shorter. Not to mention the fact that the luggage space underneath the bus was filled with bricks (I think there was some sort of border smuggling situation going on, but I can't be too sure), so our 50 or so backpacks were either piled in the aisle, or in some passengers' leg space. I think I must have slept at least 18 of the 23 hours though, so I can't really complain.

Seriously though, I am a giant in Vietnam. At one of the rest stops a woman stood and measured herself next to me and then all her friends giggled. They also laughed because my pants only came down to my ankles and they thought I was too tall for my pants.