Bus Ride to Laos

I like to travel by bus. Lets face it, flying would just be cheating (plus it is way out of my budget to take short flights to other countries.) So, 24 hour bus ride from Hanoi to Vientiane it was! I also like taking bus journeys because I actually physically feel the distance I am travelling. When I fly, it is as though I get in a big silver box, and then in a few hours I am half way around the world.
I was picked up from my guesthouse in Hanoi by a random moto-driver who spoke almost no English. He took me a few kilometers away to dark alley and dumped me with my bag, telling me "wait taxi here." Ok.... So I sat, and waited, and waited. Finally a few of us were picked up in a taxi and taken to the bus station about 30 minutes away. Here, we waited and waited again. The bus finally came to get us around 7 PM. The bus looked as though it were about to fall apart. The bus filled up with locals and then the foreigners (6 of us in all: 2 Argentinians, 1 Australian, 1 German, 1 Brit, and me). We were ushered to the very back of the bus... in the cargo storage area. The six of us were sitting amongst bales of miscellaneous stuff (which I am convinced was drugs) and huge boxes of stuff (which I am convinced were body parts being smuggled). We arrived at the border around 4 AM, but the border crossing didn't open until about 7 AM. So we sat FOREVER in the bus, trying our hardest to sleep amongst bales of drugs (ok, actually it was probably just fabric or something, but whatever.) Finally the border opened. It was complete madness. The 6 of us were trying to wait in some sort of line to get our visas, which proved to be a fruitless effort because all the locals simply pushed in front of us. After we spent 30 minutes getting our visas and shivering in the drizzling rain, we emerged on to the Laos side. It was so incredibly foggy, we couldn't see 20 feet in front of us. Back onto the bus. After about an hour, the fog cleared and we finally got to see Laos. Simply spectacular countryside!! The countryside was initially very mountainous, but soon tapered down to flat land being cultivated for something. The rural houses were similar to those I saw in rural Cambodia, as they were on stilts. The siding of the rural houses was made of woven palm frond looking stuff.
Anyway, made it to Laos in one piece. I survived and have now broken my record for longest bus ride.