Huay Xai (Laos) to Luang Prabang (Laos)
Our stay in Huay Xai the next day was unintentional in that had the Gibbon Experience not been so intense then we would have been either on our way to Luang Namtha or perhaps Luang Prabang depending on our mood. As it happened our day of hiatus was in a town that essentially acts as an entry point for those individuals that have been trekking in the north of Thailand and were looking for the cheap and nasty route into Laos. Well, it's not that bad actually, a day of doing not much actually really assisted.Most of the day was spent inside watching TV. JJ and I did manage to stroll down the street at one point and lock the four of us in for a bus ride to Luang Prabang the next day. We did, as all good travellers do, ask the right questions as to time, nature of the bus, departure point, etc. I add this line here because my 'mate' at a later point in time decided to be a tool and hammer me about it the next morning, like I was some moron who had never travelled in his life.
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Later that evening we caught up with our two Dutch friends that saved our bacon on the walk out of the jungle. It ended up being a pretty cruisey evening in all, we managed to find ourselves a decent dinner and some entertaining conversation in the middle of nowhere. I think from memory Claus and his wife (can't remember her name) were going to get up the next day and do some hardcore running as they were in marathon training, well, something along those lines. They were fitness freaks and then some, much respect for keeping to their routine out here.
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As our jump day closed and the sun broke on what was to be a nightmare of a bus ride, all four of us wandered outside waiting for the pick up that would take us to the bus station. It was at this point that Jase decided to have is morning 'princess bitch' and went at me regarding my knowledge of how and where we would be picked up and whether I had all the details. Truthfully, I've never really come close to hitting a friend in my life by f*** me, did he push me at times, this being one of those times. It's like I'd never travelled in my life and was some reason required to get his ok on the travel logistics in order to make everything reasonable in his mind, and really, what would have been the harm if the pick-up for our bus wasn't on time in any case? We'd just have hailed a tuk-tuk in order to take us to the bus station, no big deal, no reason for the melodrama. As I've said in early posts, it felt like he deliberately gunning for me at times for reasons that I'll never understand and thankfully I never took a swing at him, even though it came really close to happening.
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By powers of sheer 'luck' we made it to the bus station with the actual pick-up that we'd arranged and managed to be there approximately 20 mins prior to departure, who knows how the hell I organised that, a bloody miracle in my books? In any case, this is where the mental torture for some of us began. If the Gibbon Experience pushed our physical tolerance, well then the next 15hours across the top of Northern Laos was to push our mental endurance, especially as we were told that the trip was only to take 10 hours.
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A little while into the journey some random Swiss dude that popped up down at the back of the bus started chatting with one of us, don't remember who he commenced his conversation with but I'll blame JJ for it, she knows how to pick the winners when it comes to random conversation. I think at one point someone passed him a common copy of the Lonely Planet guide to Laos, it was right there and then that I wanted to strangle this head band wearing freak and submit him into a physically imposed silence. As he read passages from the book all we heard was a continuous chorus of 'Oh wow....wow!' and then him looking around at as us in order to gain some acknowledgment in his strange request to read passages out aloud to us, passages that we'd all read a number of times in our travels to date in any case. I'm not sure if he was looking to be acknowledged, or was looking support, or whatever the hell it was, but he was irritating the daylights out of me. Worse was to come however, his commentary on the bus driver also drove me insane. Every time the driver shifted gears, or did something not quite to his liking or his bus driving expertise, this guy laughed and made sounds that had me believing that he was about to ejaculate all over himself. It was a little disconcerting to tell you the truth. Still further, and by far the most excruciating part of our interaction with this imbecile was at the point where we had stopped at a bus station and Mr Swiss, by all his grace and power of courtesy and decency decided to buy a few cloves and garlic, just so he could start chomping on them, in the bus. Now the smell emanating from him was so foul and disgusting after that point not something I was happy to deal with for the next few hours, coupled with his lack of deodorant and generally strange manner, this creature from the country of neutrality needed a warhead up his rear in order to wake him up. I did pull up our Swiss friend for a moment and called him out on putrid the smell was that was coming from his direction, and to quote this freak verbatim, his response to me 'Oh really, I can't smell it, and yet I really hate it when other people are eating garlic because the smell is so bad'. He then continued to bite down on these mammoth cloves and offers me one for my trouble! Seriously, when did you check out of the asylum?
Somewhere in Laos, I think a few hours out of Luang Namtha
Jason and Audrey, 'loving' the experience of 15hrs on the road...oh yeah!
15 hours of fun!
Anyway, our 'fun times' continued for hours and hours after that point in time! If is wasn't the Swiss Multivite coming up with some outlandish stunt then it was the Lao penchant for excruciating music having to be blared out at ridiculous decibels for hours on end that did the trick. As we later came to learn, but not appreciate, the custom on long journeys is for crap Lao music to blare in the bus so that anyone that was trying to get some sleep and forget the difficulties of the dirt track ride (aka, Highway One) , was continuously kept in the present and feeling 'tip top'. Certainly for me, if Mr Swiss and the music wasn't part of the ride I could have survived relatively unscathed and easily could have zoned out, I think JJ was of the same mindset also. The most difficult part was actually the last hour when we were tired of guessing when our arrival into Luang Prabang was to be as most of our guesses had been somewhere in the vicinity of 3-4hours prior when we did actually arrive. As for Audrey and Jason, well, I know for a fact that the ride pissed Jason off, as most things on this trip tended to do. In the last hour there was heated discussion between them as to what their next steps would be and whether they would be leaving for Vang Vieng almost immediately after enduring this ride. Weeks later, what amused me the most in relation to this particular situationis that Jason almost had the hide to blame me for the llogistical inadequacies of his journey due to the fact that the bus ride had taken so long? Bloody hell, really? So I ask the question in return, who was the one to initially cut days off their own schedule in order to get a dumb ass tattoo completed in KL? As always, the kid needs someone to blame and it was almost always going to be me.
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In any case, we got into Luang Prabang sometime after 11pm on that day, wrecked from another draining day and looking forward to some time in one spot for a change. Not sure of what restaurant we stopped in prior to turning in for the night but it was fantastic, just what we needed after experiencing the ravages of jungle food, Lao style.
