How much time in a bus can the human spirit handle? For this spirit anything more than 33 hours would simply be unreasonable. When I was in the beautiful Phong Nha Ke Bang, the Vietnamese national park in which sits the largest cave (Hang Son Doong) and the third largest (Hang En), I couldn't help but pore over the map and see how irresistibly close I was to Laos, the neighbouring and unexplored South East Asian country I thought I would not visit just yet.
River Son in Phong Nha Ke Bang
And so it was that two days ago I boarded an empty sleeper bus to Laos from Phong Nha at 5.30am. Some fifty minutes later, I was turfed from my comfortable horizontal snooze, bags in tow, and bundled into a small minivan packed with locals. How far am I going in this, and where, I attempted to ask the driver. He typed into his phone and showed me '100km'. I hadn't expected multiple buses, but when travelling one learns to expect surprises, so I settled down, unlacing my boots. One hundred metres down the road I was hurried unceremoniously out of the minivan, laces flicking about, and into another sleeper bus, full of sleepy locals. It was to be my home for the next eighteen hours. In the last four nights I have spent only one showered and in a proper bed, due to my camping cave adventure.
At 11.30am we pulled into a petrol station 10km from the Laos border, and remained there uncertainly while the entire male congregation on the bus squatted around a jooby which had come loose in the engine. There was much gesticulating and speculation, and plastic sheets on the ground were covered with a mix of engine oil, white spirit and washers, while someone crawled underneath and back again. Two hours later the jooby was oilily re-assembled and looking much as it did when it was first extracted, and we were on our way once more.
The consultation of the jooby
The border crossing which made most logical sense from Phong Nha was Cha Lo - Na Phao, not one of the regular tourist ones, so I didn't have much researched information to guide me on the administration of the crossing. We arrived at the Vietnamese exit office at 3pm, where my light hair and woeful Vietnamese caused much interest, being the only foreigner on the bus. My foreign passport disappeared into the next room, whilst the other passengers' Vietnamese and Laotian documents were stamped swiftly, helped along by greasy tenners slipped discreetly under the glass.
After some time I was much relieved to see my passport again, and it was exit-stamped without any greasing necessary. I was then escorted alone by my bus conductor, who carried all the other passengers' passports in a plastic shopping bag, along with my own, and told to climb into the cabin of a large, unrelated lorry which had pulled up behind us. Passport man was most insistent, and after telling him I didn't understand what was happening I jumped up, followed by himself and the passports. The lorry driver started along the road away from the Vietnamese border, and as the ancient limestone karsts rose majestically around us for around half a kilometre, I wondered if passport man had arranged a solo lift for me directly to Vientiane, and whether getting into an unknown vehicle with two strange men would shortly be described in my obituary. I hoped desperately that there would be an entry point at Na Phao, as I rather needed a Laos entry stamp in my passport if I ever wanted to leave the country diplomatically. I pointed at the sunlit mountains and said, "Rat dep" - very beautiful. The driver and the passport man smiled and agreed with me, and I felt at ease. This was clearly another such travel situation where I had no choice but to trust those around me, and my gut was not twitching suspiciously; after all, passport man was clearly going to rejoin the bus to deliver the documents back to the other passengers; so I sat back and enjoyed the view.
After a few uncertain minutes the Laotian entry point appeared on the crest of a hill. I was ushered to the "foreigner" window, where my 400,000 Laotian kip quickly vanished behind the curtain and a visa was pasted into my passport, and stamped at another window. I was now in Laos!
I don't wish to dwell much on the following hours from 4pm onwards, which were endlessly long, and leavened only by three Pink Floyd albums, two of Serge Gainsbourg, and countless Sherlock Holmes novels. So it was I arrived at Vientiane at 2.30am, and realised with a start that it was now Christmas Eve. I was packed into a tuktuk for which I haggled poorly, and was abandoned at the northern bus station, a dark, desolate spot. I sat in a fluorescent-lit café, the television blaring mournful love-song videos accompanied by scenes of beautiful women sobbing on sofas. I whiled away three hours contemplating my life choices, particularly those travel-based, drinking coffee and trying to quell my grumbling bowels until the bus station opened. Such are the personal and lonely details, so often overlooked, of a backpacker.
Spotted in the dismal cafe
At 6.30am I boarded a minibus to Luang Prabang. I had initially thought to spend a day in Vientiane, but due to the fact that I had arrived in the wee hours, hardly worth finding a hotel, and that I didn't want to spend most of Christmas Day on yet another bus, I decided to do the whole journey to Luang Prabang in one desperate go. At one point I was delighted, despite my fatigue and uncomfortable personal hygiene, to look out of the window at exactly the right moment to see that we were crossing Nam Song - Nam River - a friend through which I had waded waist-deep on my wonderful caving tour in Phong Nha, so recently and yet so long ago.
Hours later, after many spectacular mountain ranges and smells of burning clutch during which I feared another jooby would have to be jigged, at last, at last!, I reached Luang Prabang. It was 3pm two days later, and my long journey had taken 33 hours. Was it worth it? I sit here now overlooking the great Mekong river, sparkling in the sunset, the dusky hills beyond, and a very large beer at my elbow. I have seen the Mekong in Phnom Penh, Saigon, and its winding, exuberant escape to the sea through the Mekong Delta in Southern Vietnam, but here is a younger, brighter river, marginally closer to its source in the Tibetan Plateau, and I have rarely been so glad to see anything in my life as I was the shining waters edging Luang Prabang, except perhaps those of my recent wonderful shower. I think there is nothing like a long and smelly bus journey to focus the mind on the present, and to enable deep appreciation of the four fine necessities of life - soap, clean running water, fresh bed sheets, and cold beer.
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