Traveling to Southern Laos

We got off work early today so that we would have some time to prepare for our trip to Salavan Province in Southern Laos. Our preparation consisted of packing for our four day journey (Wednesday night to Sunday morning), getting some snacks for the trip, and eating dinner before Lamnuegn came to the house to pick us up for the bus station.

I packed quickly, accumulated my leftover granola bars and water bottles from my journey to Laos from Chiang Mai and then Zenia and I set off to Fruit Heaven on our bikes to enjoy one last fruit smoothie and sandwich before heading into the more rural and gastronomically restricted South. Once again the food lived up to its “Heavenly” claim and we felt good as we headed back to our house to await the start of our journey.

Lamnuegn arrived at our house at around 7:30 pm and we piled our belongings into the back of her truck, climbed in and set off for the bus station. Vientiane sports three bus stations located across the entire city (a vast expanse if you include the outlying non-downtown portions) and, in this case, we headed to one of the outlying bus stations, located about thirty minutes from our house. We arrived at the station in plenty of time, before even our bus was there, and spent some time sitting in the station, which felt hot enough to fry an egg on the floor. VFI was good enough not to send us poor interns to the South alone and Lamnuegn is our official chaperone for this expedition. Our bus was once again classified as a “VIP” night bus, but this time it was VIP in truth. These were not your typical buses…

The bus we rode from Chiang Mai was a very typical double decker bus: each person was assigned a seat that reclined a bit, had decent legroom, and no lumbar support. When I climbed onto the Laos bus I was expecting a similar situation, but I got something very different. You enter the bus from the side at the middle and are immediately confronted with a set of steep steps to the right and the entrance to the bottom level on the left. On both trips, my seat has been located on the upper level, and so I made my way slowly up the steps to the upper level. I turned left toward the front of the bus, slowly walking down the center aisle. Instead of the usual seats, however, I was confronted with small cubbyholes about five and a half feet in length and four feet wide. Each cubbyhole was outfitted with two pillows, two small blankets in plastic wrap, a small open area underneath, a similar space above, and a long wire basket attached to the wall at the foot of the entire thing. These were our “seats”; two per cubbyhole, perfectly equipped for sleeping through a night bus trip. It was incredible looking and I couldn’t stifle a small squeal of excitement at the sight. Zenia and I immediately clambered into our cubbyhole (A19 and A20), stashed our shoes and personal belongings into the wire basket. As the bus finished loading, we set ourselves up in style, outfitting our cubbyhole with our iPods, sweaters, water bottles, etc. A wonderfully helpful woman across the aisle told us our shoes should go in the space below our beds and packs above, which lessened the burden on our basket and allowed room for the small food packets of fried rice that were distributed as soon as we set out on our journey.

The space was quite comfortable and it was a truly unique way of traveling. The cubbyhole was perfectly fitted to my size, so that when I reclined my head touched one wall and my feet the other. Obviously this bus was designed for the shorter Asian population, the limits of which I just fit. For the taller guys, two tickets had to be purchased so that they could have a bunk all to themselves, which allowed them to curl up in a fetal position throughout the night. Travel in this mode was more restful than the upright seats we endured during our trip from Chiang Mai, but the bouncy motion of the bus and unfamiliar surroundings did not lend themselves to restful sleep. The night passed slowly once again and I again missed the countryside, seeing only darkness out my window.