A Little Bus Ride…Laos Border Crossing in the Cold
With just a handful of hours left in Bangkok before our bus to Laos, Laura and I hopped a public bus to the HUGE Chatuchak Weekend Market – since we were in town on a weekend the market was a must see. Allegedly you can find nearly any jewelry, clothes, wood crafts, pottery, kick knacks and doodads imaginable.
I don’t think that I could do much to convey the sheer size of this market – except perhaps to point out that we spent nearly three hours wandering around the labyrinth of stalls in search of a guitar for Laura and never ended up even finding section eight (that’s where we were told we could find some guitars). We found heaps of crafts and passed dozens of push-carts with wafting the mildly unappetizing scent of grilled meats of all varieties (the Thai are definitely carnivores, let me assure you!), but no guitars were within sight.
Leaving Thailand was not uneventful! Laura and I looked through every nook and cranny of space in Thailand’s markets for a suitable guitar for her….though she can’t play yet her blog concept centers on one girl traveling the world and learning the guitar from other travelers.
That’s hard to manage without a guitar and we remedied that by a guitar-seeking adventure for the entire day while waiting for our night bus to Laos. By evening we were exasperated and tired and guitarless until a friendly Thai man had one single guitar left – a lovely jade green guitar right at a shop about 100 feet from out hotel! Laura bought the guitar and actually managed to trade the man a the Thai cash and a plastic monkey mask in exchange!
It was entirely ridiculous but he was laughing the whole time and even put on the monkey mask. Riding on that high, we nabbed the guitar mere minutes before dashing to the corner to catch our overnighter into Laos – a 14 hour journey that had just a couple of hiccups along the way.
The bus itself was psychedelic; bright red and pink interior complimented the bus’ pom-pomed curtains and a freezing cold air conditioning. Our bus was certainly not built for the locals – the huge double-decker VIP busses are inexpensive and designed for the backpacking circuit…although why the Thai believe tourists crave decked out busses is beyond me -the bus was, however, cozy (that means a bit cramped with lots of love between you and the person sitting in the next narrow seat J ).
The bus drove for hours into the night and made a pit stop at a little café in the middle of nowhere – likely as not it was probably a café owned by the bus diver’s sister’s husband’s brother’s uncle’s mom – but we all piled out into the now freezing cold night to grab chips and snacks to pass the time.
As Laura and I boarded the bus we noticed that the lower level of seats were mostly empty and with happy thoughts of stretching out on the seats and getting a good sleep at the forefront of our minds we piled our stuff into the lower section…and wouldn’t you know that the only other person sharing the lower section was extremely ill.
We were both really alarmed at first when the girl told us that she was sick (in what sounded to be American English but we weren’t sure at first). Thoughts of the Avian Flu, tuberculosis and a range of other undesirable diseases were flashing into my head (this is my state-side friends keeping me cautious with warnings).
No sooner had the girl spoken the words did she jolt me out of my internal thoughts with a moment right out of Exorcist – for minutes on end she spewed up all over the bus. I won’t go into details but I will note that Laura and I helped her as best we could, ran back into the shop for a sporty-beverage with electrolytes and pretty much took the poor girl under our wing.
Liz, hailing from Seattle, was traveling alone and had a case of food poisoning – I think that Laura and I both had visions of this being us at some point – and wanting to put out some good Karma, we couldn’t leave Liz to wholly fend for herself (although there was no way that I was staying on the lower level after…well…you know).
Laos Border Crossing Confusion
That part of the adventure passed a good part of the journey and by about 6am we were all ushered off of the bus, into the cold, and into another tiny café (brother’s friend’s cousin’s sister’s grandpa’s niece this time perhaps?) to fill out the paperwork for our Laos visas. Then back onto the bus – off again, back on again, and then off again with all of our belongings…then we were loaded into a different (and significantly smaller) bus once we successfully walked across the border.
At that point it was just a short 30 minute ride to the capital of Laos, Vientiane, and we were officially dog-tired (Liz was still quite feeble) and we headed to the closest hotel recommended in the Lonely Planet for a cozy and warm bed.
Other travelers, and even the Lonely Planet, warned that Laos capital city lacked charm – Laura and I fell in love though. Now that we have moved on from Vientiane though we realized that perhaps it wasn’t the city we loved but rather the people – I definitely have a crush on this country.
From the adorable waiter at the free WiFi internet café who humbly borrowed Laura’s guitar for an impromptu jam session to the genuinely friendly Laotians at every breakfast nook, guesthouse, and bike rental shop – we were enthralled with this place.
We didn’t stay in Vientiane for very long – in fact we took a bus out the very next afternoon, but what we saw we thoroughly enjoyed. We rented bikes for half a day (we could have most definitely explored all of the main sites on foot) but we loved the feeling of flowing with the traffic and biking along the markets right beside the locals.
After our lazy morning of bike riding exploring we bused it to Vang Vieng – a four hour ride along some of the most beautiful scenery I have encountered thus far on my RTW travels. All of the sweeping vistas, rolling hills, banana trees and rice paddies with palm trees dotting the landscape instantly brought to mind images from movies like Good Morning Vietnam and Tropic Thunder.
As for Vang Vieng we have just arrived and checked into our guesthouse, had an amazing red curry tofu for dinner and plan on getting a good sleep tonight. We succumbed and ate at one of the half-dozen Friends cafes plaguing the town…I know, lame, but at the end of a long day, sometimes Monica, Chandler, Phoebe, Rachel and the other Friends are welcome accompaniment to dinner after two months on the road.
Tomorrow the adventures begin; Vang Vieng is hugely popular on the backpackers circuit (a backpacker rite of passage say some?) and we have heard great things about all of the fun to be had here – tales of tubing adventures on the Nam Song River have us pumped up and excited for the new day!
