Advertisement
Published: March 25th 2009
Edit Blog Post
I've made it safely back to Luang Prabang after a very . . . interesting . . . bus ride on the "V.I.P" bus from Phonsavan. I've learned from my bus journeys thus far in Laos that the roads are extremely curvy, though well-paved, at least. I got to the bus station in Phonsavan this morning hoping that I could make it farther north than Luang Prabang today, but had mostly given that idea up after I learned that the bus ride would be eight hours on the windy, mountainous highway.
We headed off down the road in good spirits on our "V.I.P." bus that seemed pretty OK and had not one live rooster on it (unlike my last bus from Vang Vieng to Phonsavan). We seemed to be moving at a snail's pace, though, and we were still on relatively level ground, so I was wondering it the eight hours was really going to turn into more. It soon became clear that trouble lay ahead for many of the passengers, when a man came down the aisle and handed out small plastic barf bags to all of the Lao people on the bus (foreigners were not given barf bags
for some reason). There were only three other 'farang' on the bus, two nice ladies from Canada who were next to me and a bitter, jaded Negative Ned from Australia, who was fortunately way up at the front of the bus, unloading his vitriol elsewhere, on people who most likely couldn't understand him (mercifully).
Only about 20 minutes down the road we came upon a small songthaew that was loaded to the brim with goods. We watched with wonder and curiosity as backpacks and bags from the underbelly of the bus started appearing and filled up the back seats of the bus. But we began to watch with anxiety as the bags kept coming and coming, forming a barricade in the back. I was still sure that it would be okay and was certain that they couldn't possibly overload the bus too much. But the bags kept coming and coming and soon there were huge bags of firewood lining the aisles all the way up the bus. Finally my western sensibilities kicked in and I started to feel more and more anxious about the idea of having to crawl over all that stuff in case of emergency. We were
almost all the way to the back of the bus and it felt more and more claustrophobic. We were sort of stuck, though. Our bags were trapped underneath everything, we didn't know where we were, and also, on the frivolous side, Phonsavan is not a town that you want to spend any extra time in even if we did make it back there. So we sucked up our worries and carried on, after the 50 minutes it took to load everything!
As we started the climb into the mountains, the rain and the puking started. Even scarier than curvy roads are wet, curvy roads with an overweight bus and the occasional sound of squealing brakes, babies crying, and adults throwing up. Fortunately no one in the seats closest to me were sick, but a woman 2 seats up was really suffering the entire ride. I managed to drift off for a little while but was awakened by the cold wind coming in the windows. I felt annoyed to be cold for one moment, until I realized that the sick people probably needed the fresh air and that is was also protecting the rest of us from the nauseating smells.
At one point along the road we happened upon a crash between a truck and a minivan. It seemed that the van was pretty damaged but luckily no one was injured. Along the way we were still unexplicably picking up more people, some of whom had to sit in the aisles, and at one juncture we picked up 3 Canadians and an American who had been on the crashed minivan. They took it because they thought it would be more comfortable and safer than the bus, and usually it would be so, but today was not their lucky day.
After about 5.5 hours we FINALLY stopped for a bathroom break and some food, which was good because I was getting a little cranky by that point. The rest of the journey was mostly uneventful because I guess we had gotten used to our fortress conditions in the back. I finally thought to put on my iPod to block out the retching sounds and the rest of the trip was therefore much more pleasant, although I wouldn't call it the "good trip to all passengers" that was promised on my ticket. As we stumbled off the bus in Luang Prabang, the thought of trying to carry on further today couldn't have been further from my mind and even the thought of leaving tomorrow morning is not too appealing, but we'll see how it goes.
So I'm back at my same plywood room guesthouse in Luang Prabang where Courtney and I stayed about 6 nights ago or so and I was even able to bargain down a little as a repeat customer. Bonus.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.058s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0397s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Courtney
non-member comment
oh holy hell, there is no waaaay I would have lasted. I'm glad you did ok, and even happier for you that I was not there...that coulda been bad!