Here’s a story to remind you how absurd and annoying travel can be, despite the wonderful pictures, smiles and stories you traditionally bring back home.

That not everything goes according to your plans is a fact - we were not exactly lucky with the weather in North Vietnam. Rain followed us everywhere, be it in the form of storm clouds or floods. As a result, it made entire provinces inaccessible or difficult to travel to.

We decided to go to Sapa, which promised slightly better weather forecast and no floods since it’s on a mountain! However, the mountains greeted us with grey, wet and cold weather, typical for autumn. It’d be perfect for warming up by the fireplace, but not for hiking the muddy footpaths of Sapa - as a result, we had enough of Sapa in two days and didn’t wish to stay longer.

Laos was our next destination since Norwegian meteorologists promised us sunshine. Being 150km away from the Lao border and we decided to go by bus to experience the remote mountaineous landscapes northeast of Luang Prabang.

We spent awful 10 hours crammed in an overfilled sleeper bus, where we got 2 seats for 3 tickets - one of us had to sleep on the floor among packages, our bags and other people with a ticket for that “seat”.

The bus was braking and the driver drove slowly through the misty night. But for me, it was still a scary night ride as we were following narrow winding mountain roads (probably with steep cliffs). Vietnam is notorious for its traffic accidents and poor driving skills, responsible for more than 10,000 death every year. I was just hoping our bus wouldn’t add to the statistics.

Luckily, we made it and at 4am, we were told to get out, we were in Dien Bien, what we thought would be our goodbye to Vietnam. It was dark, but the whole city was awake!

We bought our bus tickets and got proper seats this time! We spent our last change for breakfast sandwiches and sticky rice. The bus was small, but we fit ok along with some other foreigners and stuff locals sent to Laos.

The rural scenery was amazing to watch. It was 6am and kids were biking to school, buses and trucks roamed through the villages with their horns, leaving only dust behind. Meanwhile, vietnamese farmers’ were already hard at work, cultivating their crops and hauling their produce to morning markets. The sunrise was marked with a dramatic twilight that shred light onto the mountains. Beautiful morning.

The road we followed was increasingly worsening from semi-pavement to dirt - about 18km from the border, we entered the militery zone, which was dominated by the Tay Trang border post, uniformed official’s heaven.

Now, lets get to the point of this story. We traveled for over 13hrs from Sapa (or 23hrs from Hanoi) to learn that they won’t give us the exit stamp required to leave Vietnam. As we applied for e-visa, we could only enter/exit Vietnam through one of 28 border posts - Tay Trang isn’t one of them. You can only leave through here if your visa is just about to expire. So now, we were stuck. We simply couldn’t believe an exit stamp would be such a problem.

The communist official told us “no, we’re very sorry, you have to go to Nam Can border”. We made multiple attempts at negotiating with him, but he firmly followed the rules. Quite interestingly, he wasn’t willing to stamp even for a bribe (first uncorrupt communist?!) and told us that doing so would kill his career. The solution he gave us meant bussing around the country for 2 more days to get to the correct border, what the fuck? The point being the getting of a stamp! We were trapped in bureaucratic nonsense.

Luckily for us, there was an old lady running a coffee shop. We sat down and searched the internet for a better option than 2 day buses. Coffee made us find a guy who’d take us back to Dien Bien for 100k dong each, from where we could fly out.

I found 2 daily flights from Dien Bien to Hanoi, costing painful 1,600k, but taking only 1 hour! I motorbiked around to take out $$ from the ATM, third one worked. We didn’t dare to waste our time anymore, we wanted to enjoy our family holiday instead of dealing with this communist ordeal. So for 200$, we flew to Hanoi, where we got exit stamps and peacefully continued for Luang Prabang.

Moral of the story? Sometimes, you need a stupid stamp to move on.

Practical info about Dien Bien crossing:

• Buses are running to/from Sapa - Son La - Vinh. These are sleeper buses, but they vary in comfort. You should book carefully onto a comfortablee/more expensive tourist bus over the overfilled local bus we ended up on. We paid 300k for Sapa-Dien Bien, but felt cheated on the value of the bus.

• Buses to Laos are running from 5h30 to around 7am, depending on your destination. These are small town sitting buses transporting a lot of people and goods, not exactly comfortable. The bus for Muang Khua costs 115k per person and tickets can be bought at the bus terminal ticket office. You have time to buy some food at the bus station.

• Dien Bien has an airport with 2 daily flights to Hanoi, significantly cutting the trip. There are plenty of shops, ATMs, guesthouses like any other small town, but nothing to write home about. It’s the place where Vietnam won its battle for independence from France.

• The area is poorer and only a transit destination, so it might make for an interesting overnight stopover. The surroundings are stunning.

• Tay Trang doesn’t accept e-visa for entry/exit. Exit by e-visa only possible on the last day of your visa. Don’t make the same mistake, it’s expensive.

• Laos visa on arrival is available and requires $30-40 according to country ($30 for most of EU) plus a passport photo and several “processing fees”. We ended up paying only $1 processing fee at the airport, but I read there are “weekend fees”, “evening stamping fees” etc.