From Vientiane to Vang Vieng

Shel and I took a bus from Vientiane, Lao to Vang Vieng.  We spent the morning before taking in an amazing Buddha garden.  As I recall, an eccentric man had commissioned artists to make statues portraying Buddha in any manner they saw fit.  The stranger the better it seemed.  We were the only ones there for most of the time and when we decided to leave we stopped at a noodle stand just outside.  For as bored as I got of noodle bowls, there are several stories from our trip concerning them.  In this particular noodle bowl I found a tiny purple octopus tentacle.  Quite beautiful, but I'm not interested in eating something with the consistency of microwaved shoe leather, and so passed it to Shel.

And so we got on our bus to Vang Vieng.  With some hesitation I'm sure.  Vang Vieng is a fraternity paradise.  I can get to that later.  My intention here is to tell about the trip there.

There are plenty of new looking tour buses in use in Lao, but I think we were on one of the more common broken looking buses you would expect.  I seem to remember it being white with some green stripe.  Metal racks on the top.  No aircon.  Oddly, I think we may have been the only Farang (foreigners) on this bus.

We drove through Vientiane, a rather dull and dreary city.  Almost modern, but just not quite.  And buildings turned to mountains and street lights to trees.  Shel nods off at some point, as do I.  And I wake just in time, to glance out the window, and see that roughly half the road has fallen off down the mountain.  Right in a curve.  The entirety of our lane for about 20 feet had just fallen down the mountain.  And the bus driver just swerves around it and continues on.  Thankfully we didn't meet anyone in the turn.  As I had just woken up, I thought perhaps I imagined it.  But was lucky enough to take the same road back a few weeks later and confirm it hadn't been repaired, much less marked.  I didn't tell Shel till after we arrived if I remember correctly.

We stopped in a village of sorts for lunch.  A sandwich stand and a buffet.  Most went for the sandwich stand.  I went for the buffet.  Probably not the safest choice, but I survived, and certainly enjoyed it more than a sandwich.  After eating, I stepped out back to use their squat.  When I exited, a small boy came up and asked for money, usage tax and whatnot.  I told him that I'd just eaten in the restaurant.  It's not as if he understood.  And if he did, who's to say that that allows usage of the toilet facilities?  He realized I wasn't going to pay and set about killing a chicken for the evening rush I'm sure was coming on.  (I'm just remembering that this occurred on the trip from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang when we took a small mini van of sorts.  But considering I may never talk about that, and most likely there is little to tell, I'll leave this here.)

And then, A flat.  Thankfully there is a spare, and within the hour we're back on the road again.  Not before peeing in the grass and taking hitchhiking pictures.

It starts to get dark and we're trudging along.  Until of course the bus becomes trudged out.  Another flat.  It's dark now and we've already used the spare.  We're quite close to the town, so people start calling their friends (yes they live in bamboo huts, but no one is without cellphones these days).  We wait.  And wait.  And wait.  Eventually either the bus gets going or they send another one, or we hitch hike.  I can't remember exactly, but we arrive at the bus station.  The mulberry farm hostel was meant to be 3km down the road.  We can walk that right?  I had my pack inside of a duffel bag.  For some reason I didn't think it was necessary to take it out and put it on.  So I'm trying to carry it down the road.  In the dark.  It's starting to get tiresome.  After probably a kilometer a song tao pulls up and gives us a ride.  He drops us off at the 3km point where the 2km driveway is.  But he doesn't charge us.  Surprised and thrilled and renewed with hope for humanity we walked the 2k down to the hostel.  Where of course they were out of bunks but we got a room for 3 with the most amazing view.  Of course, like everywhere there were mosquito nets, so mine was rendered useless yet again.