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When I started writing this blog I never once expected that a single bus journey would be worthy of it's own post but I have been proven wrong.
I wasn't greatly looking forward to the 22 hour bus journey to Laos as you might expect but I didn't expect it to be quite as horrendous as it was. To start we were picked up half an hour late by a taxi when we were expecting to get straight onto a bus. I assumed that we would be taken to the bus which was waiting nearby in a less crowded street, however we were actually taken to a random spot in the middle of nowhere half an hour away where we were left to wait in the rain in the dark.
Eventually a bus arrived and we gathered our bags to board. I was slightly confused when the driver insisted that we take our bags on board instead of storing them underneath, but relieved when they were taken to the bag instead of us having to sit with them. We soon realised that the lack of storage was due to the fact that the bus was being used to transport
goods of some kind across the border and so as well as having the mysterious goods underneath and on top of the bus, there were also boxes under the seats which reduced the already non-existent legroom.
Having squeezed my knees into a seat barely big enough for the Vietnamese/Laos people on the bus I was already fearing the worst, but I wasn't prepared for the neverending stream of peope entering the bus. As well as all the seats being full the aisle was also filled with plastic stools to seat more people, and those who couldn't get a stool sat/lay on our bags on the back seats. It was slightly claustrophobic to say the least.
Shortly after the bus started moving the music started. I use the term "music" in the loosest sense because the sound that was blasted out of the speakers at full volume was more offensive than anything I would normally describe as music. It was also accompanied on the tv sreen at the front of the bus by the videos to the songs which consisted of some strange outfits and even stranger dancing. At least I had my book to distract me from the physical and aural pain...that was until they turned the lights out. "At least the air con is still on" quipped a voice from the back, and as if by magic...
At around 1.30am the bus stopped for a much needed break. I managed to separate myself from the seat and climbed past the bodies, stools and various boxes and sacks in the aisle, only to find the doors locked. The driver and "guide" had buggered off to get a bowl of noodle soup ignoring the fact that no-one else could disembark without either the keys in the ignition or the remote control. Eventually someone managed to find the driver who came to let us off without a word of apology.
At around 4am the bus stopped in the pitch black with nothing around it, the doors opened and about about 20 people exited in about the same number of seconds, leaving our sleepy heads slightly confused. This confusion lasted until we pulled up at the Laos border a couple of minutes later - those 20 people were all crossing the border illegally. This wouldn't have been a great problem for me personally had we not arrived at the border 3 hours before it opened to allow them to make the dash across it without being caught. We sat on the stationary bus until 6 when the offices opened and started the process of crossing the border legally. This took some time but wasn't too much trouble after being facilitated by a $1 bribe by each of the 9 tourists on the bus.
Shortly after the border opened at 7am we continued on our way in what was now a slightly more spacious bus. We passed a customs check-point a short while past the border before making a stop for breakfast. After we had been there a while and were ready to get back on the bus who should pull up in the back of a truck but our illegal immigrant friends who, it soon became clear, were rejoining us - but only after they took an hour over their breakfast. When they finally got on not only was the bus as claustrophobic as before, but it was now filled with the smell of a group of men who had been running through trees and bushes to cross the border.
We continued for sometime on the slow journey up steep windy roads which I thought were in surprisingly good condition (I had feared a Cambodian style dirt-track). That was until we made the next unplanned stop. We were asked to leave the bus. The bus then exited the road and drove through the muddy ditch at the side of the road with us following. As we reached the river which we were expected to walk through it became apparent why the bus couldn't use the road - the bridge over the river had collapsed with the weight of a truck which was passing over it! After trudging through the mud and the river we got back onto the bus which had rejoined the road and continued on our merry way. On the bright side: it wasn't as if our bus was dangerously overburdened to the extent that it might break one of the subsequent bridges was it?!
The remainder of the journey has become a blur as my brain decided to shut down and block everything out. The one positive thing to say about it was that it actually arrived at 3.30pm - a mere 21 and a half hours after setting off and 30 minutes early! You don't get that too often back home!
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KC and Crew
Keith H
Thanks for the heads up
The trip sounds a bit like some of the ones I've had in the US...ok, may be not. I've been planning on making the same trip and now I have an idea of what I'll be up against. If it were a straight forward bus ride, it wouldn't be worth the story, eh? It makes a great story!