Before I post about the alluring, picturesque city of Luang Prabang, I first want to detail how I got there.
GETTING TO LUANG PRABANG
To save money and to have a chance to gaze out the window as Vietnam becomes Laos, I booked a 24-hour bus from Hanoi to Luang Prabang. It was a surprisingly comfortable, relaxing way to travel along the countryside.
I’m completely kidding.
The bus service had instructed us to be waiting at the pick-up spot by 4pm. A French girl and myself sat there until 4:55pm, when a man comes up to us to show something on his phone screen. It’s our ticket information, and I’m just relieved that we hadn’t been abandoned. He doesn’t speak any English, but puts his hands up to indicate that we should keep waiting where we are. We shrug and stay put. After another ten minutes, the French girl and I are ushered into a car that takes us to the station where the sleeper bus is parked. We keep confirming over and over that this is heading to Luang Prabang while we hop aboard.
On the bus, a different guy yells at us to get to one of the beds in the back. I follow his points and shouts and climb into the top bunk, squeezing my body between the ceiling and bed that’s a bit smaller than a twin. The French girl begins to settle in the bottom bunk, but the guy keeps shouting and gesturing for her to join me. The girl and I make eye contact and share another shrug. She wedges herself next to me, and the bed is so narrow that it’s too cramped for both of us to rest on our backs at the same time. This girl had a great attitude and sweet disposition, but still, it was a little soon in our relationship for spooning.
Throughout the shuffling of bodies, this bus is blasting music. I don’t mean that the radio was turned up; there’s a TV up at the front, and Vietnam Idol is screaming through the speakers. Go look up a clip of Vietnam Idol. Try blaring it through your loudspeakers for a few hours — and don't take any bathroom breaks. Enjoy.
I assumed the music would stop once we departed, but no such luck. Eventually I crack a little. I maneuver my body out of our bunk and go up to ask them to turn it off, hoping they’d at least turn the volume down. Again, no such luck. I negotiated for the driver to turn it down by a single notch, which I’m pretty sure they turned back up by the time I retreat to my coffin-bed.
Sleep came in spurts. We arrived at the immigrations checkpoint before sunrise, and the bus stayed parked for several hours before the offices opened.
The immigrations officer charged two dollars to exit Vietnam, and such low-level corruption was aggravating on principle. There’s no instruction for how to get through the checkpoint, or where to find the bus, so we get our visas approved and wait in a huddle on the Laos side of the border.
It was 8am, and one of my fellow passengers pulled beer out of his pack and offered me one. I should have said yes.
The driver finally comes to our group and clearly recognizes one of us, me, because red hair serves as a pretty dependable identifier. After getting yelled at for a few moments, I gather the group and we brace ourselves for the final leg of our journey. So I thought.
The best way for me to convey the ordeal is through the candid messages at the time.
A beautiful series of texts captures the emotional and physical ride:
If you can't read the texts, here's the timeline:
4:03PM - ...There hasn’t been a point to exchange money yet, so the drivers stopped for lunch while we all just sat and watched until they screamed at us to get back on and the MUSIC STARTED BACK UP
4:04PM - I should be getting off soon according to my original ticket, but I think we’re hours away
4:07PM - So far that I’m sincerely afraid they’re gonna drop us off in a different city
4:10PM - Yep they took us to the wrong city
6:41AM - Expletive.
6:42AM - Those [expletives] knowingly took that French girl and me to the wrong city. We kept saying "Luang Prabang? Luang Prabang?" and showing our tickets, they would nod and say yes yes yes, then they drop us in Vientiane and point to the bus station and make us pay for tickets to get on a different bus for Luang Prabang. This bus sounded like a rocket ship and felt like a mob of kids in a bouncy house, all windy roads and potholes, and a sick old woman plopped herself down next to me. That bus was eleven [expletive] hours. Phone at one percent, no clue when we were supposed to arrive or how to get to my hostel after that point, feeling a little queasy from my diet of 1. chewy sesame candies 2. banana chips 3. no [expletive] water.
So we were dropped in Vientiane, six hours south of Luang Prabang. The drivers pointed us to the bus station, where we rushed to buy tickets for another overnight journey, back the way we came.
After 36 hours of bus, I arrive in Luang Prabang and hastily find an ATM so I can get a tuk-tuk driver to my hostel. I'm able to direct him to the general area, unsure of the exact location since my phone had died. The French girl and I part ways. I hope I wasn't the only one who felt a strong sense of solidarity in our goodbye-hug, but hey, I had always been the little spoon in our 36-hour relationship.
It takes close to an hour of wandering around in the rain, but I find my hostel and collapse into the complimentary breakfast.
In retrospect, it's a best case scenario: a dreadful enough experience to make a good story, but I'm safe, and nothing valuable was lost (save some of my dignity...so like I said, nothing valuable).
Next, I'll post about Luang Prabang itself.
