Crossing the border from Laos to Vietnam

The day we crossed the border from Laos to Vietnam was defenately a day we would happily forget or avoid if only it was possible. It started as a reasonably normal day. We packed our bags early morning at Vieng Xai to catch a local transportation to the Vietnamese border. It took few hours to make the 60km trip, which is completely normal at this part of the world. It took 1 hour more to actually cross the 100m of the border. But it was only then that our real problems begun.
As we finally understood, after getting few contradicting version of our problem, there is no bus to Hanoi from the border. Actually, there is no bus to anywhere on the day we arrived. Nor on the following day. The only thing you can do except of putting your bagpack on your shoulder and head back to Laos, is to take a special Taxi to make the 360km to Hanoi. The price of the taxi was 200 US$, which is like asking 2,000$ in a western country. And no, we have no other option to get out of there. Once we grasped the gloomy situistion is really gloomy, we headed from shop to shop to look for a cheaper means out of this God-fprgotten shit place. They all had "transportation suggestions" and as it turn out, they were all calling the same first Taxi we met, trying to sell us this deal with a little extra cupon for they valuable help... After some 5 hours of trying our best, we gave up. It took the Taxi 2 more hours to actually start moving, but at this point, an hour more or less didn't matter for us. We calculate it will be about midnight as we will eventually reach Hanoi. Of course, we were too optimistic. The drive to Hanoi included one stop due to sudden lack of petrol (i.e. our driver didn't put gas in the tank before heading to the 360k; journy) and another to eat at a crampy restaurant on the way. We finally got to Hanoi around 2am, some 20 hours after today started. It was a lousy first day in Vietnam, but it was all going to change for the best really soon.