Driving around Laos Part 2

A Bus to Nong Kiaow

It seems that my experience of buses in Asia are permeated this time by characters and driving styles. From Chiang Mai to Pai the death bus rocked my world quite literally, where the driver insisted on veering at break neck speed around every sharp bend up the mountain path. The last bus from Luang Prabang was bumpy, slow and uncomfortably hot, ensuring a need for beer after.

This bus is special. 

Loud Chinese pop blasts out of the speakers and a Laos mother and her two children next to me softly vomit in to clear plastic bags. At first I feel sympathetic, mountain roads and a lack of experience in a winding, noisy, bumpy bus that smells of dog is surely a recipe for motion sickness. It's when the second hour of dramatic puking, after I’ve donated my water only to watch mother discard it on the floor, and a child somewhere up front begins a banal scream that I start to lose my patience. It's a bus not the death star! As if karma heard my unsympathetic thoughts I begin a little nausea trip myself. See how you like it Falang! It must be the Chinese pop music that to my western ears sounds a like a Laos’ entry to Euro-vision.

Finally, mother pats me lightly on the arm, signalling to move forward while holding up her bag of sicky goodies. Seriously?
Littering the road with not only an army of plastic bags but those also filled with your acidic human stomach sludge? Are there no bins where we're headed? I am now devoid of all sympathy.

So as the bus slows to a stop and mother rouses her sickly brood from their respite, I rejoice at their departure, while they carry their trail of destruction away with them. Peace prevails once more.

Nong Kiaow bridge

And when we arrive in Nong Kiaow, we realise that to see a place so beautiful, sometimes you have to suffer to be deserving of the view. Nong Kiaow is separated in two. One area for locals, the other seemingly built of guesthouses. We make our way across the bridge on foot to our designated Falang bungalow, and begin to drink in slowly, the view with a beer Lao on Laos time.

(Only a week later I would culminate my time here with a thirty hour bus journey from Vientiane to Hanoi, where all foreigners were sent to the back civil rights style, a French man dismantled the speakers, a Singaporean was burgled and I left the bus hopeful to never see another overnight bus again.)