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Published: January 18th 2009
Laos Bus - 28 hours...
The Mighty Magical Laos bus, lets not forget the guy on the bike who tried to board us!It all starts with a bus journey… the choices of the traveller, 2 days on a slow boat or 1 day on a bus?! We chose the later, for better or worse! 28 hours later and a few hundred miles from the Thai border we arrive at a bus station in Luan Probang. The 28 hour bus journey was hard work but we met lots of fellow traveller’s mainly as a westerner we were all shoved to the back of the coach behind the rice and many stool’s where more locals attempted to get a seat! Laos has some amazing scenery and is drastically different to much of Thailand, people live in small wooden huts on the side of huge hills claded in thick jungle. Mudslides seem to be a bit of a problem in Laos and the roads are either missing or covered with rocks and mud or the odd tree!
We arrived in the semi-French looking town of Luan Probang and got a hostel as it was 5am so just wanted to sleep, we got lumbered with the Taiwanese girl whose name now escapes me but we called her betty as it was easier to pronounce than her name!
Laos roads...
now you know why it took so long to get anywhere in Laos! On waking up for our first real day in Laos we met up with Liz and Tom the couple from the bus and went and got some breakfast from a little French café, really odd but nice food and really, really cheap! Me and Jay were a bit tired so we went and chilled out by the river with a few beer lao’s which is quite possibly the nicest lager I have had, brewed by Carlsberg apparently, which I found odd as Carlsberg is pretty rank! The guys we met went on to the waterfall so we relaxed and played a few games of cards before all the guys got back and we went for some of the nicest meat bbq I have had at a restaurant called lao lao gardens, Team James demolished three plates of meat, a few eggs and some noodles! At this point you’d think it would be time to sleep and digest the food, but no, off to the only place that still serves alcohol… the bowling alley!
The day of the dragon boat race, crazy monk and local filled markets selling BB Guns and drinks in little plastic bags with straws coming
Lao Lao Garden Resturant
Cook your own food, usually i'd be against this but the meat was so good! out?! We start the day by exploring the markets that extend all around and starting the day as usual with a mixed fruit shake or what we just found an Oreo shake, quite possibly the most delish drink known to man, well it was at that point! We found some seats and grabbed a bight to eat whilst the boat race was on, was cool to watch but really we had no idea who was winning or what the locals were chanting!? We decide it time to head for The Tubing and book our coach out of Luan Probang to Van Vieng.
The Tubing, on the banks of the Nam Song we launch ourselves willingly into our donuts headbands and all and off we go at 11am for TUBIN! 2 seconds later we are in a been dragged into a bar playing some sort of 90’s techno and we hit the beer lao for an early lunch kick start. We spot one of the rope swings we had heard about and I won’t lie, I feared for my bandaged foot when I saw the height of the thing! Two beer lao’s later and Tom’s first up the slippery steps
Gecko (DameO) play's dead
We managed to capture a gecko, but we thought we had killed it, little did we know they drop there tall's and play dead! to the rope swing and me and Jay, not to let a youngen out do us quickly follow to fling our selves into the Nam Song. From that point on it’s carnage on a scale that reminds of uni days and dentist chairing every poor person that got dragged out the river into whatever bar we were currently frequenting!
The aftermath… t’is fair to say the day after is one that we would rather forget, hazy memories and a headache that would knock an elephant to his feat! After a day of watching family guy and friends in friends bar we head to Oh La La and run into AdrianO and The Shex from the full moon party, off we go and GET INVOLED again!
Tubing AGAIN…! More dentist chairs and crazy floating down the river to sunset bar where the buckets come out in force as well as the mighty windmilling!
The result of the second tubing was a need for recovery of which Team James opted for sight seeing with The Dan Drager adventure man! Off to the blue lagoon and cave‘s on bikes around Van Vieng. This was well worth the effort as got us not
Tubing, Laos
Me, Whiskey, Beer Lao and a tube! only away from the drink for a few hours but got to see some of Laos amazing scenery and the local villages that were around Van Vieng that support the traveller’s. The blue lagoon was actually just a river but still a lot of fun and the walk up the hills/cliff’s to the huge limestone caves was a strong achievement after the preceding days! Unfortunately, the next day when we got back from breakfast Jay’s phone had been stolen from the room by who we suspect the cleaner. We ask to be moved rooms to one with a padlock on it and decide not to pay them for our 13 days accommodation because they knew who did it but did nothing to help us. We sneak our bags to friends accommodation for when we leave, bye bye guest house!
The triak (kayak) trip down the Mekong, we got picked up and from Marv and Adrian’s guest house where James and Paul were also meant to be, James was there be we seemed to be missing Paul… After a bit of quick decision making James leaves a note for Paul to catch up via the bus straight to Vientiane and
Views from a cave.
Lanscape around Van Vieng on our adventure day, bikes, caves and lagoons! were off to conquer another river… or are we! Three rapids on the way down and a lot of fast flowing water and some people who didn’t really know how to control a kayak, which was especially funny watching Marv in his own kayak going around in circles! Off we go then Team James in a triak and we see AdrianO and James bail, in doing so we smash into a big wave and were out in the water too! A lot of panic and I end up with the other James in my kayak once I’m back in it and Jay is in AdrianO’s but he’s holding onto a rock refusing to let go!! (Of course Marv was on his arse as well) Rapid’s two and we all bail again! Rapid three and we all bail massively, although, Team James was back for the final rapid’s and I swear we almost nailed it! Time for some much needed coughing up of Mekong water and some food wrapped In a leave cooked on a bbq! After a bit of rest we are back in the Kayak’s at a bit more majestic pace until we get to the end and are
Adventure day!
After a day of exploring the local area down mud tracks on little bikes! driven the short distance to Vientiane for some much deserved chillaxing and capital city exploration.
Vientiane, 1 room, 3 beds, 6 guys, all about saving the money! Ha-ha! We head out to explore Vientiane, not a great deal going on here but we do find a bar with live music and a band that are actually pretty good so just chill out and have a few beers. I manage to get Helen on facebook and we arrange a date and place in Vietnam to meet up and cross paths, Helen is coming from Cambodia via Saigon (Ho Chi Minh) so should make it to Nha Trang in the south by the 22nd September where I should hopefully already be.
The trip to Vietnam… booked and pick up in the evening, should have picked us up at 6 to take us to the bus station, roles on 6:30 and a pretty confused little guy turns up hurrying us to hop onto this ghost buster van thing. This was the start of what can only be described as an epic adventure! Laos to Vietnam, Vientiane to Hanoi… the total amount of time spent travelling, 30 hours. In brief we missed
The wrong bus!!
This is the bus we were put on that wasn't going to Hanoi! the VIP bus we had paid for as our taxi driver was late and got put onto a local bus that was going to Dalang in the south of Vietnam, Hanoi is in the North! We stopped in a random middle of know where place till 6am and after a lot of angry chat we managed to get some money back and a local tuck tuck to an actual bus station only a mile down the road, nightmare, we bartered for a VIP min van to get us to Hanoi and off we went $400 dollars lighter! We arrived in Hanoi 30 hours after we had initially set out, funny now looking back, south east Asian transportation at it’s best, maybe we should have flown Laos Airlines, although with there safety record of 1 in 10 planes going down maybe we chose wisely!?
So that’s 49 days into our travel’s and I’m not missing the rat race or the British summer. Missing home and family and obviously the cat’s but so far this has been the most amazing trip of my life with the obvious highlights of the full moon party in Thailand and the Tubing in Laos which was something else, the most fun you can have on a river and I hear since that they have finished the slide they were making so a revisit may be on the cards!
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