Instead we decided to take a twenty-two hour bus ride from Hanoi, Vietnam to Luang Prabang, Laos. It left at 7pm (we left the hostel at 5pm) and arrived the following day at 430pm supposedly. Aside from a couple of really warm very-back-seats, I'd say I've had pretty good luck with transportation. Nothing missing or stolen. No incapacitating breakdowns. A couple even had semi-usable wifi! And bathrooms!
My luck held true for this trip. No bathroom but frequent stops to pee in nature (guys have it so easy) or load/unload packages. No one sent any live chickens (I've seen it happen). I went with the dehydrate-self-before-leaving method. The stops for food consisted of a late dinner at a questionable restaurant and a lunch stop the next day where I ate a delicious fried rice. So I was thankful for the banh mi, popcorn and sleeve of Oreos I decided to bring.
There was this little posse of Asian men that seemed to be in charge of driving/entertaining the driver/loading and unloading cargo/fixing the bus/sleeping. When we went to ask them the password to the wifi network that seemed to be following the bus, they chuckled and shook their heads. Fine whatever. I can sleep. Then when we got to the Laos border in the morning we asked again. This time they chuckled and said "no wifi in Laos. Only Vietnam." Ha. They let us use it for long enough to check the score of the game (thurs quarter, good news for me).
We continued along fairly eventfully. The bus wasn't full, so we had some room to spread out. The seats were far enough apart that when I reclined mine all the way, I could lie down almost horizontally with my bent knees in the aisles and sleep. At one point the bus was making some sort of insistent warning beep so they had to pop out and do some work. I think the bus may have been overheating.
At one point I noticed the copilot looking around urgently for something. As I kept watching I realized the bus driver had an unlit cigarette in his mouth. And no lighter. The copilot checked the center console, dashboard, floor and jackets. No luck. So the bus driver stopped the bus, went back to the back and got his lighter. He lit the cigarette and forgot to blow his first drag out the window. We resumes our drive as he opened his window.
Once we got to Laos, the roads got a bit smaller and windier. It's easy to see why the trip takes so long. It's not fast or straight. But it's freaking beautiful. It seems that there are villages built around the main roads so some parts would have houses and people walking around. Other parts would just be massive hills of gorgeous greenery.
I'm still not sure what happened, but for some reason the bus had to be put up on jack. I took the opportunity to wander (not too far) and stretch my legs. After this, it was getting pretty close to our supposed arrival times. We knew that with the stops and repairs we weren't going to be on time, but twenty-two hours is a decent amount of time to sit in one tiny space. I think by the time we got there around nine pm, even the best of us was feeling a little ready to be done with the stale-smelling bus.
Looking back, I would have bought another sleeve of Oreos. But it really wasn't so bad. We'd heard stories in Vietnam and read blogs where things went a lot less smoothly. I'm very thankful they didn't. We got one bus with lots of space. And beautiful scenery. I call that a win.
