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The journey from Luang Prabang to Phnom Penh in Cambodia was long, frustrating and expensive and It was on this journey that I endured one of my worst bus trips ever. I have split it into two blogs, Vang Vieng and Pakse, so you don't get bored and give up half way!
We left Luang Prabang in the early morning and for the next 6 hours or so we weaved up and down the mountains of central Laos and sped around cliff-edge corners, several times only avoiding head on collisions by sheer inches. This drive wasn't too bad, we stared out the window as the bus sped past road-side village after road-side village, all with their own cows, naked children and 'world-vision australia' emblazoned water tanks.
We arrived in Vang Vieng in the late afternoon and started the now familiar trudge around to find accomodation. It was during this hot uncomfortable walk that we began to realise just how much of a complete s***-box Vang Vieng is.
We soon found an average guesthouse and a couple hours later set off to find some dinner. We had a bite to eat at a supposedly 'happy' cafe intact with several tvs playing 'friends' and many cushions, before moving on to a slightly more authentic road-side stall which miraculously had free wifi! It was during this hour or two sitting by the road eating noodles that we promised eachother we would leave as soon as possible! I'm sure Vang Vieng was once a nice, quiet little Lao village but with the famous 'tubing' down the Song River it has turned into a dirty, unpleasant bunch of streets with nothing more than 'friends' cafes and many many drunk british backpackers! (Who made us feel ashamed to be anglo-backpackers). All the 'friends' cafes were supposed to have 'happy' menus with shakes, pizzas and all sorts of things full of weed, amphetamines or even opium. As far as we could see, there was only one or two places which still had any of the 'happy' food, leaving dozens of boring cafes all showing endless repeats of friends (and family guy at some of the better places!). If the pizzas really did have any kind of 'happy' side to them, these cafes could be entertaining, but alas, the happy has left the building. The steady stream of embarrasingly obnoxious brit backpackers heading up the street were all not only so drunk that they were struggling to walk, but were all wearing little more than board shorts or bikinis, a significantly rude thing to do in Southeast Asia.
We had initially been interested in trying the 'tubing' but the brits turned us off it. Stuck in a river for hours with THOSE people, no thanks!
(We actually love the Brits, Ty is just a little angry)
The best thing we saw in Vang Vieng was a monk cutting the grass with a whipper snipper, very weird.
That night we booked our bus to Pakse in southern Laos and couldn't wait to leave.
The next morning's bus was unsuprisingly full of backpackers and was a fairly unpleasant ride. Several lone travellers had decided to take up a row to themselves, leaving me and Miriam seperated to different rows. Then the girl infront of me kept reclining her chair further and further towards me. Gosh Backpackers are annoying!
This bus dropped us in Vientiane where supposedly we were to wait 1 hour before getting on our sleeper bus to Pakse. Once again, the travel agent had lied. We ended up waiting in a fairly nondescript bus terminal for about three and a half hours before a tuk tuk came to take us to the next bus at a different terminal, 30minutes away!
Personally, I had been somewhat looking forward to the advent of travelling on a sleeper bus with my own bed, waking up in Pakse the next morning nice and rested. Again, the travel agent had lied. The bus which she had told us we were to be on had its own toilet, large beds, tvs with dvd players etc. The bus we were put on saw me and Miriam squeezed together into one 1mX1.8m "bed" with no tvs anywhere to be found. The toilet was by far the smallest cubicle i've ever been in. Imagine being in an aeroplane toilet, then imagine its half as tall, then imagine its a lao-style squat toilet and that there is urine all over the ground and no window or ventilation. Thats what it was like. Now forgive me if I seem to be rabbiting on about the injustices of bus travel, but I need to get this out!!! This blog seems to have become a kind of stress release tool where we can complain and abuse people and places! Aswell as the distinct differences between the promised bus and the ACTUAL bus, there was also a loud rattling noise which seemed to be n the roof of the bus, directly above us. This noise continued right through the night. We both tossed and turned literally all night. There was little more than a tiny hand rail to stop me from falling out of the'bed' and smacking my head on the steel supports down the aisle so we spent alot of time squished over to the window side of the 'bed' to prevent any nasty accidents.
I think I may have managed 45 minutes or so of some type of exhaustion-induced daze and I awoke with the bus half empty, miriam asleep, other passengers getting out and tuk tuk drivers trying to get in to find a fare! We had arrived in Pakse, it was 6am.
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