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Published: April 8th 2008
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I left Chiang Mai to make my way accross the border into Laos to meet Afra and Wiz; 2 of the girls I had done my project with. The journey seemed pretty straight forward, a flight to Udon Thani and then an hours bus ride to the border, cross the border and meet the girls the other side, in Vientianne. Getting to Vientianne was the easy part. Basically my phone decided to work sporadically and I couldn't get hold of the girls even when it did work. I was tring to find out what guest house they were in so I could get my taxi driver to drop me off to meet them! (they had been on the overnight sleeper train from Bangkok and arrived at 9am, and I wasn't at the border crossing until 5pm) During the journey a text came through on my phone and I relayed the name of the guest house to the helpful taxi man. I had to repeat myself several times to him and his puzzled face worried me. Eventually I decided to write it down so he could look at it, in case I was pronouncing it incorrectly. As I looked at the text
again, it said Vang Vieng, so I told him this information thinking it was an area of Vientianne and it might jog his memory.....Hmmm, still no! he informed me Vang Vieng was miles away, a 4 hour bus jouney in fact and the last bus there for the day had left at 2pm. Fiddlesticks!!! Never mind, I decided to check into a fairly mid-standard hotel that had TV and get a good nights sleep so I could leave on a morning bus instead. As it turned out, Casino Royale was one of the films on TV, so I was happy with Daniel Craig for the evening and a bit of home comforts!
The following morning I got to the bus station at 10am as I was informed that a bus was leaving at that time. I (reluctantly) handed my big rucksack to the guy to put on the roof of the bus and went and sat at the back of the bus waiting for it to leave. I sat there as more and more people got on and more stuff was put up on the roof, including 6 full-size double mattresses!!! Some other back-packers got on and came to
sit with me which was good as I then had someone to talk to for the journey. Time passed and I got very impatient (as I do) waiting to leave. The bus eventually pulled out of the bus station at 11.40am!! You see, I've learnt now that they just won't leave until the bus is full so that could be anytime!! We stopped a little way out of Vientianne and some men started bringing more stuff onto the bus. There wasn't room on the roof, so it had to come on board with us...trouble was there was box, after box, after box that it actually filled the WHOLE gangway all the way up the bus. It then dawned on us why all the local people always want to sit at the front of the bus...they're not stupid like us backpackers and sit right at the back and get totally jammed in!! It was quite a funny experience though, one of those that you can't really believe is happening but you have to laugh otherwise you might cry!! Little did I know there would be more of this to come a few days later! My sense of humour would not fail
me in these difficult times!! Anyway, the jouney was 4 hours or so and meandered through beautiful scenery and local villages so I really soaked it all in. At one village, about half way there, local women offering 'food on a stick' haggled around the bus windows to try and sell us something as they couldn't very well make it onto the crammed bus! This was quite funny to watch. I also saw many locals riding bicycles, but one-handed, so that they could hold an umbrella up in the other hand to shade them from the sun!!
I eventually arrived in Vang Vieng, to view the most beautiful place I had seen sine I'd been away...jaw-dropping scenery of mountainous, cliff backdrops and a river running through it too. I met up with the girls at the guest house and we just chilled out for the rest of the afternoon and evening. The next day would prove to be my best day up to this point, a real highlight that I didn't comprehend when I agreed to go 'tubing.' I wasn't really sure what 'tubing' was all about to begin with! Anyway the basic concept is, you're taken upstream of
the river, about 10 or 12km, given a rubber ring and then you make your own way back by the current of the water. We also discovered that you stop off with your ring at various bars along the way and sample the beverages on offer as well as the rope swings that you swing out over the river on and deposit yourself into the water!!! I had such an amazing day, the scenery was spectacular and stopping off along the way made it even more fun! I even tried one of the rope swings (twice!) I was really scared but so glad that I did it!! Memories I won't ever forget.....
The following day we went for a bike ride to see some of the beautiful scenery and crossed (very carefully) over the footbridge and onto the other side of the river which was enjoyable but a little hard work in the heat. After lunch we left Vang Vieng. We decided we couldn't face the 10 hour hike of a bus ride north to Luang Prabang and thought that we would start our journey to get to Cambodia. We left that afternoon and arrived back in Vientianne to
catch the overnight sleeper bus to Paxxe (towards the very southern point of Laos) As we pulled up at the bus station in Vientianne and spotted our bus we were pleasantly (stupidly) suprised to find a bus with actual lie-down beds!! Maybe things were on the up.....We grabbed some food while we were waiting to leave and then got onto the bus......only to discover that the beds were for 2 people!!!!!! So imagine a bed, as wide as 2 seats on an ordinary bus and only as long as me (5 foot 6) - literally head and feet touching, for 2 people to share!!!! It was an adventure you could say!! luckily I was sharing with Afra and Wiz was sharing with a girl who got our bus from Vang Viang so she wasn't a complete stranger!!
Anyway we arrived in Paxxe 6.30am the next morning after not much sleep! and then in our tired and delirious state got the bus to Don Khong instead of Don Kon. It was still on what is known as the 4 thousand islands though which is where we had decided to stay just as a stopover before we crossed over into Cambodia.
The place was absolutely deserted like a ghost town, so we booked into a guesthouse with air con and a tv and just chilled out which was what we needed considering the journey that we didn't realise was ahead of us!!! The next day we had the most tiring journey, using 4 different buses and 2 boats to get through Cambodia to Ponm Penh the capital. The buses were in a horrendous state, and there was no room to put your legs so I had to pull my knees up to rest on the chair in front. They crammed 16 of us into a minibus you'd normally sit 10 in and there were 2 guys that had to ride on the roof of one of our minibuses (for 3 hours) that also had a motorbike roped to it. Also, the roads in Cambodia seem to be in a really bad state so the ride was not so comfy! We had left the 4 thousand islands, and crossed the border into Cambodia - we left at 8.30am that morning and didn't arrive untill midnight that night! We were in Cambodia though and had made the bulk of the travelling in one
day so at least it was out of the way. I really loved the scenery in Laos and was looking forward to seeing what Cambodia had to offer.....hopefully more memories than just the 'ínteresting journeys!!'
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Memoirs
Can feel a book coming on here - something about all the methods of travel? Remember I thought of it first! Respect!