Lowkey in Laos

Whirlwind tour in laid back Laos

I arrived in Vientiane, Lao PDR after a 24 hour bus ride from Hanoi, VN. Let me back up and describe part of that journey. After getting deposited on a dark, anonymous street south of Hanoi, on a rainy evening, we (two French guys, rhymes with "keys") waited for an hour before being hustled into a parking lot and rushed onto a bus that took off within minutes (quickest takeoff I'd been on... until the return trip... but I'll get to that later). We drove through the night, and arrived at the mist-strewn mountaintop border crossing at 5:30AM, 1.5 hours before they opened. The ride was relatively comfortable, and the foreign fellas that got on at about 2:00 in the morning were relieved to see some other Westerners among the crew of young men (one of which was "security" - he offloaded an assault rifle at the end of the trip), several other Vietnamese men transporting various cargo, a couple of Lao men, and a lone female passenger. We had the friendly bus, apparently; they even provide free water and a snack. At the border, we encountered another, larger group of travelers, who told of how their bus stopped in the middle of the night, loaded black plastic-wrapped packages onto the bus, which they buried under a layer of bricks in the aisle... They got through customs inspections, however. Our cargo supposedly only consisted of Choco bars and pig feed (40kg sacks of which I helped load in the middle of the night, as my hourly exercise, and attempt to speed up our passage). We arrived in Vientiane without incident. Moved on to Vang Vieng, but declined the innertubing and rope swinging on the river, of which I've heard several stories of broken limbs... Getting wiser in my old age. Then on to Luang Prabang, at which my previous post takes up the story. Yes, I realize this is about 3 weeks ago now, but I've finally been able to come to terms with it... Yes, that's a joke.