Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Day 61- 62 in the world of Sam and Dani: We left Vang Vieng and got a 4 hour bus to Vientiane, the capital. When we arrived we spent a little while looking for accommodation because everywhere we tried seemed to be nearly double what we had been paying up until now in Laos. When we finally found somewhere we got showered and found an English pub where we had a few drinks, then set off to get some street food (yeah we're actually getting good at this now).
We walked along the river and found a little stall/cafe, but just after we ordered and sat down to enjoy a drink it began to chuck it down, torrential rain! Half of us had food and half of us didn't so we told them not to worry about the rest before diving into a rooftop bar across the road to take shelter and watch the lightening storm that followed. In Laos they don't bring all the food at once, when a meal is brought out it is meant to be shared by everyone at the table, they find it very rude if someone takes a whole meal to themselves. At first we thought they were just really bad at bringing food together but this is the apparent reason for it.
The next day we had a lazy day looking around because we had booked a ticket to get into Cambodia and thought that we'd take it easy in preparation. We were picked up from our guest house at 7pm in a tuk tuk for the first part of our 24hour journey. When it arrived we were already unsure as to whether all 9 of us would get in because there were already people in it, but of course we got squashed in. What we didn't expect was that we had to pick more up on the way, causing people to be sat on each others knees and people hanging onto the back.. There were 20 people squeezed in!
When we got to the bus station we were quite impressed with our night bus. You walked down the aisle and either side there were beds, with the same on top. We were in pairs and settled into our little booths that had pillows and blankets, with some TVs every couple of booths down. Once settled in our new home for the next 12 hours we were brought some supper, water and sweets. So far, so good. But not for long... the bus set off at 8.30pm and the driver turned on some awful foreign music that only seemed to be coming from the speaker in our booth, meaning that it was turned up really loud so that the rest of the bus could hear! We asked him to turn it off, but this meant listening to beeping similar to that of an alarm clock, not good! When we asked him to stop it buzzing, he turned the music back on, then when we asked him to stop that the buzzing started again, and so on, brilliant! After some time of trying to explain this to him he managed to stop both, but then the lights on the bus went off and we were told to go to sleep, it wasn't even 9pm!! We tried and tried to ask him to either put the lights on or put a movie on, but he wasn't having any of it. Clearly the TV placed in our booth was there to torment us.
Instead we entertained ourselves playing eye-spy (lasted all of 1 minute as it was dark), 20 questions and my grandma went to market. After we'd exhausted these games we thought we'd best try get some sleep so that when we arrive in Pakse in the morning we would be all fresh for the second 12hour bus ride into Cambodia. Again, this wasn't going to happen. The bus kept stopping at random places along the road and the locals on the bus kept getting off and going to the toilet despite there being one on the bus. Even more wrong was the old lady who squatted in full view of the bus and didn't even wipe, urghhh!!
When we arrived in Pakse at 7.30am the following morning we were supposed to be transferred to the second bus where we would have a 12hour journey and arrive in Siem Riep at 7.30pm, avoiding the detour through Kampong Chnang. But surprise surprise, there was a problem. We were told that we couldn't go directly to Siem Riep although this was guaranteed to us when we booked our ticket, so we ended up traveling south to Kampong Chnang where we changed buses, then back up north unnecessarily! We finally arrived in Siem Riep at 22.30pm.
- comments