In a bus for a loooong time, the local way !!

From Vientiane I decided to go to one place on north of laos. As I have already visited the most interesting place on the way, I looked for a direct bus. I read on internet it was about 16h bus. From Vientiane there is no agency that sell ticket for this bus. So I had to go to the bus station to find out more information and buy my ticket. As almost everywhere in south east asia, the bus station are always out of town, I had to rent a bicycle early in the morning to get to the bus station, buy my ticket for a bus at 17:30 and back in town.

In the afternoon, when it was really hot, over 40°, I went to the bus station again, and find out that my bus wasn’t a sleeping bus, but just a normal public bus, a bit old, without air conditioning!!

Also it was very funny to see how many stuff they loaded on the bus, all over the roof there was 1 or 2 meter of box, bags, random stuff and even a motorbike !! and inside the bus between the sites there was also box everywhere.

During the bus ride I really had every bad things that could happen. Next to me there was a family, they had two site for the mom, the dad and their two children, and of course one of the child was crying almost all the time. And very funny story, the only way to make him stop crying, was when he was looking at me!! I guess that it is because of my beard, that he might have never seen before, I don’t really know but that was really funny !!.

Also for most of the night they were playing very loudly that traditional lao music, which was extremely annoying when I was trying to sleep !!

Very early in the morning there were a very big storm, and with all the water one truk get stuck on the road, and we had to stop for a while to help him. A bit later we had a flat tire and had to stop for one hour to fix it!

And finally, 22 hours after my bus start, I arrived in Luang Namtha, if I count the time of the transfer to and from the bus station, I took me over 26h !!!

That was really hard, but also a very cool experience !!