Luang Prabang is also a sleepy town, lets just say all of Laos is sleepy. You seriously have to take about twenty steps back and just relax cause no one will move faster than a snail, no matter how quickly you need to move, in fact, if you are in a rush, they will just think you’re nuts.
My adventurous ride from Vientiane to Luang Prabang:
Wanted to leave less of a footprint in this incredibly well preserved country, so I decided to take the bus to Luang Prabang as opposed to flying, even though flying would have only taken forty minutes, I took an overnight sleeper bus. Sleeper bus means, you get to sleep on the bus in a bed. I took this to mean, I got my own bed but this is a terribly wrong assumption. In fact, you get to share this cot size mattress with another stranger AND the mattress is about 66″ long cause that’s how tall I am. They accidentally put me next to a local dude and he and I just stared at each other like, no way. So the bus organizer comes over and tells me to follow him to the front cause apparently there’s a bed with only women. So the front and back of the bus has a single mattress that covers the width of the bus and can sleep four. Maybe four little Laos women, who all happen to at least be a foot shorter than me and forty pounds lighter. The mattress in the front may have stretched the width of the bus but was also a good eighteen inches shorter in length, which meant, when I laid down, I had my knees bent the whole time. Indian style. I feel for all tall people. And I should mention that since Laos is so nicely preserved environmentally, their roads are also nicely unmaintained. It was as though this bus had absolutely no suspension system at all and the worst driver to top it off. So needless to say, my ride was fun!
And when I finally arrive. I reward myself with a bungalow on the Mekong.
With a view.
And a victory beverage.
Connie Sun 