The long bus ride from Hanoi to Luang Prabang
I took a bus from Hanoi, Vietnam, to Luang Prabang, Laos. It was supposed to be a 26 hour journey and drive through beautiful landscapes in Laos after crossing the border. One of those things was true. I took it because it was a third of the price of a flight (which would have taken an hour), and, being in the last month of traveling and incurring some unexpected expenses back home, I'm trying to save money wherever I can. Anyway, here's what happened:
5:00pm
I was waiting in my hostel lobby to get picked up, when a man on a motorbike rides up in front and starts flailing his arms motioning for me to come out. He will henceforth be known as Dampe. I grab my bags and walk out the door. Not the minibus I was expecting, but I wasn't fazed. "Luang Prabang?" I ask. "Yes yes yes," Dampe replies as he takes my day pack from my hands to put between his legs. I barely had time to get on the bike before we were off.
5:05pm
We arrive at a tourism office and Dampe asks me for my passport. He flips to the page with my Vietnamese visa on it, nods, and gives it back to me. He gets back on the bike and tells me to follow him on foot. So I start to follow him as he speeds down the street, accompanied by George, the other backpacker we've just met up with. We follow Dampe through the crazy, crowded Old Quarter streets, picking up other confused backpackers along the way. Eventually he leads us to a bus stop at the side of a main road, tells us to wait, and drives away. A few minutes later, a minibus shows up, and we climb in.
5:45pm
After driving through the crazy Hanoi traffic for a while, we're on a major 8-lane road. Suddenly, while driving, the bus doors open and Dampe wheels up beside us, with a Japanese girl on the back of his bike, along with her huge suitcase. He seems to be trying to tell her to somehow get on the bus while it's moving. James Bond shit. She is not having it. Eventually the bus stops for about 10 seconds for her to heave the giant suitcase on board and climb in after it. I googled "Japanese Bond girl" and Aki from You Only Live Twice was the first hit, so she'll be referred to as Aki.
6:30pm
We're out of the busy rush hour traffic and into some random sidestreets and alleys. The minibus stops, the driver starts yelling "Luang Prabang!", and the doors open. Dampe appears again out of nowhere and repeats that people heading to Luang Prabang should get off, via more yelling and pointing at another bus. A few of us disembark and head toward the other bus, which promptly starts reversing and almost runs Aki over. We save her life and get on the bus. Our ragtag gang is four: myself, George, Aki, and a new girl, Lori.
8:30pm
We are barely outside Hanoi. We stop for dinner. I buy cheap apples for breakfast.
10:30pm
George has a small guitar. Lori also plays, and sings, so they take turns. We have an impromptu jam session. A few local guys join us, request some songs, and get finger-snapping lessons.
4:50am
After being in and out of consciousness for the past 4-5 hours, I wake up as the bus is violently struggling to get up a hill. It stalls several times and shuts off, and labours more and more to restart. We are in the middle of nowhere and it's storming, so breaking down here wouldn't be ideal. The driver idles us for a few minutes and tries again, and this time it works. I breathe a sigh of relief.
5:50am
A Vietnamese woman on the bus is yelling for no reason.
7:30am
We stop for the first time in 10 hours as my bladder is about to burst. I pee into a trough in a gas station bathroom. It occurs to me that it might not be a urinal, but I confirm afterward that I was at least in the men's bathroom, so there's a pretty good chance it was.
7:45am
As we're driving through a small town, the driver slams on his brakes. We then pull over and stop for an hour and a half. People eating nearby seem to be talking about the bus, and the driver keeps leaving and coming back. No one knows what's going on. We probably killed someone. I eat the apples from yesterday.
9:30am
We stop for breakfast. I have a bowl of pho.
11:00am
We've reached the Vietnamese border, about 4 hours behind schedule. The building is almost empty, so we wait for a few minutes in the hall for an agent to open the door to the passport office. He stamps us out and we get back on the bus to drive to the border to enter Laos.
12:00pm
We're still waiting to leave for the Laos border. No one knows why. The driver and some other local people seem to be having lunch and a restaurant outside the border control office.
1:15pm
The cafe has closed up shop and after stopping for two hours longer than we needed to, we drive the 5 minutes to the Laos border. We could have walked there and taken less time.
1:30pm
We go through border control. It functions like a McDonald's drive-thru, where we have to walk from window to window, except each window has a fee associated with it. At the first window, I pay $42 USD for the visa, which I was prepared for. As I move along to the different windows, I have to pay a $5 photo fee, a $2 visa processing fee, a $2 tourism fee, a 10000 kip stamp fee, and a 5000 kip temperature fee. Yes, at the last window, there was a man who took my temperature by aiming some sort of temperature ray gun at my forehead, then charged me money. There were no ATMs there, so I couldn't pay in kip because I had none. Not to worry, though: they accepted USD instead of kip at an outrageous exchange rate. I left with a visa and lighter pockets. As we wait for George to finish getting shot with the temperature gun, the bus driver yells at us to hurry up. Apparently we're in a rush now after that 2 hour lunch stop.
2:15pm
We all get into Laos without a problem, and we start to drive through the beautiful, impossibly green hills of the Phongsaly province. I enjoy the views and my book for the rest of the afternoon.
7:15pm
We arrive at a bus station and the driver shouts, "Luang Prabang!" We've been picking various people up and dropping them off since we got into Laos, and the four tourists are the only ones left at this point. I check my map and see that we are 200km away from Luang Prabang, so I'm confused. We get out to see our bags already being loaded onto the roof of a minibus nearby. The driver says "Only two hour." Yeah, okay. Unless this bus sprouts fucking wings, we're not getting there in two hours. But this guy isn't taking us any farther, so we get on to a packed bus full of local people and much less comfortable seating.
7:30pm
I am showered with some sort of cold coffee as a local man tries to throw his drink across my body and out the window. I now somehow smell worse than I did before.
7:45pm
An entire family enters the bus. There are two empty seats, so I am curious how this will play out. It turns out, only two of the young boys are staying on for the trip. They get strapped into one seat and Mom, Dad, and Grandpa disembark after having a conversation with another passenger in the back of the bus, which was hopefully a discussion about where the boys should go when the bus stops, but probably not. The youngest boy is wearing pants that say ANARCHY in large letters. He is 6 years old. He immediately makes a pillow and blanket fort on the platform between his seat and the driver and passes out. I am jealous.
9:20pm
The young girl beside me wakes up and vomits into a plastic bag.
10:30pm
We stop for a snack. Since the bowl of pho 13 hours ago, I've eaten half a tin of candied peanuts and a few bite-size cookies. I pay $2.50 for a bunch of bananas. Aki found some spicy ham in a banana leaf for $2, so I buy one too. It turns out to be 15g of ham. I eat it in one bite, then eat five bananas.
11:45pm
The music has changed from Laotian classic rock, to adult contemporary, to some sort of Asian Weeknd who sang partly in English ("Kiss me, kiss me, do me now"), but for the last hour has been the standard minibus soundtrack of hardcore, ear-splitting, head-grinding, techno and dubstep remixes. Still better than hearing Ed Sheeran or Bruno Mars for the 48-millionth time in the last 8 months. I start nodding off and headbutt Aki a few times accidentally.
1:30am
Over 32 hours after leaving my hostel in Hanoi, we arrive at the bus station in Luang Prabang. We're 2.5km away from our hostel. George, Lori and I are staying in the same place, and Aki is staying up the road. We prepare to walk it but when a tuktuk driver offers us a ride, we gratefully take it (after haggling him down to a third of his original price). He drops us off near our hostel, but refuses to take Aki to hers.
1:45am
We eventually find our hostel down a network of alleys, but the gate is locked. We find a way in and Lori and George look for reception while Aki and I look for WiFi so she can figure out how to get to her guesthouse. We're all successful: we check in and Aki gets directions. Apparently, there was still a receptionist working despite the gate being locked. We get our room keys and beds and I walk Aki to her guesthouse nearby.
3:00am
George, Lori and I unwind with a beer and a game of cards while my phone charges in my bed.
3:30am
I probably wake all of my roommates up climbing into my bunk, tell Kris I'm alive and chat briefly, and finally pass out.
5:00pm
I was waiting in my hostel lobby to get picked up, when a man on a motorbike rides up in front and starts flailing his arms motioning for me to come out. He will henceforth be known as Dampe. I grab my bags and walk out the door. Not the minibus I was expecting, but I wasn't fazed. "Luang Prabang?" I ask. "Yes yes yes," Dampe replies as he takes my day pack from my hands to put between his legs. I barely had time to get on the bike before we were off.
5:05pm
We arrive at a tourism office and Dampe asks me for my passport. He flips to the page with my Vietnamese visa on it, nods, and gives it back to me. He gets back on the bike and tells me to follow him on foot. So I start to follow him as he speeds down the street, accompanied by George, the other backpacker we've just met up with. We follow Dampe through the crazy, crowded Old Quarter streets, picking up other confused backpackers along the way. Eventually he leads us to a bus stop at the side of a main road, tells us to wait, and drives away. A few minutes later, a minibus shows up, and we climb in.
5:45pm
After driving through the crazy Hanoi traffic for a while, we're on a major 8-lane road. Suddenly, while driving, the bus doors open and Dampe wheels up beside us, with a Japanese girl on the back of his bike, along with her huge suitcase. He seems to be trying to tell her to somehow get on the bus while it's moving. James Bond shit. She is not having it. Eventually the bus stops for about 10 seconds for her to heave the giant suitcase on board and climb in after it. I googled "Japanese Bond girl" and Aki from You Only Live Twice was the first hit, so she'll be referred to as Aki.
6:30pm
We're out of the busy rush hour traffic and into some random sidestreets and alleys. The minibus stops, the driver starts yelling "Luang Prabang!", and the doors open. Dampe appears again out of nowhere and repeats that people heading to Luang Prabang should get off, via more yelling and pointing at another bus. A few of us disembark and head toward the other bus, which promptly starts reversing and almost runs Aki over. We save her life and get on the bus. Our ragtag gang is four: myself, George, Aki, and a new girl, Lori.
8:30pm
We are barely outside Hanoi. We stop for dinner. I buy cheap apples for breakfast.
10:30pm
George has a small guitar. Lori also plays, and sings, so they take turns. We have an impromptu jam session. A few local guys join us, request some songs, and get finger-snapping lessons.
4:50am
After being in and out of consciousness for the past 4-5 hours, I wake up as the bus is violently struggling to get up a hill. It stalls several times and shuts off, and labours more and more to restart. We are in the middle of nowhere and it's storming, so breaking down here wouldn't be ideal. The driver idles us for a few minutes and tries again, and this time it works. I breathe a sigh of relief.
5:50am
A Vietnamese woman on the bus is yelling for no reason.
7:30am
We stop for the first time in 10 hours as my bladder is about to burst. I pee into a trough in a gas station bathroom. It occurs to me that it might not be a urinal, but I confirm afterward that I was at least in the men's bathroom, so there's a pretty good chance it was.
7:45am
As we're driving through a small town, the driver slams on his brakes. We then pull over and stop for an hour and a half. People eating nearby seem to be talking about the bus, and the driver keeps leaving and coming back. No one knows what's going on. We probably killed someone. I eat the apples from yesterday.
9:30am
We stop for breakfast. I have a bowl of pho.
11:00am
We've reached the Vietnamese border, about 4 hours behind schedule. The building is almost empty, so we wait for a few minutes in the hall for an agent to open the door to the passport office. He stamps us out and we get back on the bus to drive to the border to enter Laos.
12:00pm
We're still waiting to leave for the Laos border. No one knows why. The driver and some other local people seem to be having lunch and a restaurant outside the border control office.
1:15pm
The cafe has closed up shop and after stopping for two hours longer than we needed to, we drive the 5 minutes to the Laos border. We could have walked there and taken less time.
1:30pm
We go through border control. It functions like a McDonald's drive-thru, where we have to walk from window to window, except each window has a fee associated with it. At the first window, I pay $42 USD for the visa, which I was prepared for. As I move along to the different windows, I have to pay a $5 photo fee, a $2 visa processing fee, a $2 tourism fee, a 10000 kip stamp fee, and a 5000 kip temperature fee. Yes, at the last window, there was a man who took my temperature by aiming some sort of temperature ray gun at my forehead, then charged me money. There were no ATMs there, so I couldn't pay in kip because I had none. Not to worry, though: they accepted USD instead of kip at an outrageous exchange rate. I left with a visa and lighter pockets. As we wait for George to finish getting shot with the temperature gun, the bus driver yells at us to hurry up. Apparently we're in a rush now after that 2 hour lunch stop.
2:15pm
We all get into Laos without a problem, and we start to drive through the beautiful, impossibly green hills of the Phongsaly province. I enjoy the views and my book for the rest of the afternoon.
7:15pm
We arrive at a bus station and the driver shouts, "Luang Prabang!" We've been picking various people up and dropping them off since we got into Laos, and the four tourists are the only ones left at this point. I check my map and see that we are 200km away from Luang Prabang, so I'm confused. We get out to see our bags already being loaded onto the roof of a minibus nearby. The driver says "Only two hour." Yeah, okay. Unless this bus sprouts fucking wings, we're not getting there in two hours. But this guy isn't taking us any farther, so we get on to a packed bus full of local people and much less comfortable seating.
7:30pm
I am showered with some sort of cold coffee as a local man tries to throw his drink across my body and out the window. I now somehow smell worse than I did before.
7:45pm
An entire family enters the bus. There are two empty seats, so I am curious how this will play out. It turns out, only two of the young boys are staying on for the trip. They get strapped into one seat and Mom, Dad, and Grandpa disembark after having a conversation with another passenger in the back of the bus, which was hopefully a discussion about where the boys should go when the bus stops, but probably not. The youngest boy is wearing pants that say ANARCHY in large letters. He is 6 years old. He immediately makes a pillow and blanket fort on the platform between his seat and the driver and passes out. I am jealous.
9:20pm
The young girl beside me wakes up and vomits into a plastic bag.
10:30pm
We stop for a snack. Since the bowl of pho 13 hours ago, I've eaten half a tin of candied peanuts and a few bite-size cookies. I pay $2.50 for a bunch of bananas. Aki found some spicy ham in a banana leaf for $2, so I buy one too. It turns out to be 15g of ham. I eat it in one bite, then eat five bananas.
11:45pm
The music has changed from Laotian classic rock, to adult contemporary, to some sort of Asian Weeknd who sang partly in English ("Kiss me, kiss me, do me now"), but for the last hour has been the standard minibus soundtrack of hardcore, ear-splitting, head-grinding, techno and dubstep remixes. Still better than hearing Ed Sheeran or Bruno Mars for the 48-millionth time in the last 8 months. I start nodding off and headbutt Aki a few times accidentally.
1:30am
Over 32 hours after leaving my hostel in Hanoi, we arrive at the bus station in Luang Prabang. We're 2.5km away from our hostel. George, Lori and I are staying in the same place, and Aki is staying up the road. We prepare to walk it but when a tuktuk driver offers us a ride, we gratefully take it (after haggling him down to a third of his original price). He drops us off near our hostel, but refuses to take Aki to hers.
1:45am
We eventually find our hostel down a network of alleys, but the gate is locked. We find a way in and Lori and George look for reception while Aki and I look for WiFi so she can figure out how to get to her guesthouse. We're all successful: we check in and Aki gets directions. Apparently, there was still a receptionist working despite the gate being locked. We get our room keys and beds and I walk Aki to her guesthouse nearby.
3:00am
George, Lori and I unwind with a beer and a game of cards while my phone charges in my bed.
3:30am
I probably wake all of my roommates up climbing into my bunk, tell Kris I'm alive and chat briefly, and finally pass out.
Comments
Post a Comment