Laos - the Country of the Slow

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Now it was that time everybody looks forward to at one point in their lives - the journey to the 'relaxed' country of Laos. This started by getting into a minibus in Chiang Mai without any seatbelts but lots of legroom. During this few hour journey, where Holly was convinced the driver was falling asleep and I started thinking about death, we stopped at a small shop in the middle of nowhere with many samples of nuts. We also stopped in a market with some women swatting away flies with butterfly nets. In retrospect, could have been catching them for farming for the deep-fried maggot market. This was a strange place to stop, as it was only half an hour before reaching Chiang Khong. The driver probably needed a nap.

Chiang Khong. What a nasty toilet of a place. Seems to exist solely to give backpackers somewhere to stay before moving on to Laos. Though this was nothing in comparison with our bedroom (which unfortunately we were forced to stay in) -
"Oh, great, they've provided a padlock so we can double lock the door"
Nope. The main door didn't even latch closed. On closer inspection everything seemed to be intact apart from the actual latch itself that was missing. What strange strange person would want to remove just that? I had to walk all the way into town to get a very small amount of money, and was scared I would get attacked by the many dogs littering the roads. Seriously, there were loads and they were all disgusting. When we arrived back later on after a few drinks, a car had materialised in the dining room. We were starting to feel uneasy about this place, it's bright pink frilly curtains and wallpaper, posters stuck on with masking tape, cork ceilings inevitably going to fall within a week, the sink that drains onto the bathroom floor (with a small plastic bag acting as the sediment collector that we both silently vowed to avoid), and the spatially indeterminate motorcars.

Good job we got to leave early the next morning. Quite a comical journey across the huge Mekong river, in a tiny ferry with one lifejacket and five passengers. I say comical, it could have quite easily not been. We were just happy not to be on the one with the very fat man and his correspondingly obese suitcase.

I noticed that in Laos, like Cambodia, the people drive on the right, whereas in Thailand they drive on the left. That's probably why they dug the Mekong river along a lot of the border, to avoid any head on collisions.

At this point we decided to go with the 14 hour public bus instead of the two day slow boat. The bus was, quite honestly, hilarious. A group of four came on and realised two of them had the same seat numbers as the other two. Someone had the non-existant seat 45. Someone wanted to sit on the roof for a better view or something. The bus-boys solved this dilemma by bringing onboard some plastic stools that clearly came straight out of kindergarten and putting them in the aisle. There was also loads of bags of wheat or sand, that I could only assume was to be used as ballast.

Well, the first half of the journey went alright. The bus had to go up any sort of hill at walking pace in an incredibly violent low gear (music starting again at the top, presumably because now there was energy to spare), and occasionally had to navigate a rockfall, but we were generally impressed with the well kept roads. This was until nightfall, and evidently the tarmac only works the day shift because we were forced to do the rest of the journey on mud. Average speed - 10mph. As the bus drove over some of the more bumpy sections, at times it was at such a slant it almost fell over. Our hope was further sapped when the only native who could speak English got off at a stop that wasn't ours (together with his big sack of wheat/corn/maize/sand/drugs), and further still when we realised this was only two-thirds of the way and the time was 10pm.

So... at last we arrived at Luang Prabang... at around four in the morning. That's 16 hours on the bus. Thankfully our tuk-tuk driver had a mate who was either very keen for us or a psychopathic insomniac, who agreed to set us up with a room for half price. Holly and I quickly (and rudely) took the only twin room and left two complete male strangers to share a double bed. But at last we were here... And had that nagging feeling that getting out would be equally difficult.

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Photos

Ferry Across the Mekong
Right behind was just a puddle of water that I hoped wasn't due to a hole in the bottom.

Our Favourite Bus
You can't quite see someone's motorbike on top - but you can see the crude tarpaulin cover over all the bags. And someone standing on top.