So I sat in the nightbus. It was just fine, like any other nightbus but this one had a bit more bumps in the road. At 05:30 in the morning I arrived at a town where I needed to change to a regular bus. When I arrived, a Vietnamese guy immediately asked if I was going to Luang Prabang and he dropped my big bag on the roof of his bus. The bus would leave at 07:00 so I strolled around to one of the shops to get some sandwiches for breakfast.

At 07:00 the bus was filled with 9 tourists and some locals and the roof was loaded with luggage. When we departed, we only drove for 15 minutes to wait along the side of the road again. We were not told what we were waiting for but after 30 minutes the driver showed up with 15 more locals while all the seats where already taken. Although we protested at the start, it did not matter. We were sitting with 5 people on 4 seats (I was lucky to have a kid and a mother next to me) and about 10 people standing in the bus. Needless to say it was crowded, but I had enough leg space, some music and I was reading the thirde book of the Hunger Games.

When we arrived at the border crossing to Laos, some local "official" said that he needed to take our temperature before allowing us to get a visa. Complete bulls*** obviously, as I said to him as well but I am pretty sure that I was not the first one to try and make that clear to him. He put a small object against my head and pushed it. Without even telling me my temperature, which I would have wanted to know because it was such an important check up, I continued to get my visa. It is pretty ridicilous that they also asked a fee for giving back my passport but I guess they made it a serious business to empty the pockets of tourists in as many ways as they could think of. I ended up paying $2 extra for their nonsense and it is actually worth it to experience it haha.

After receiving my passport back again, the driver signalled us to go back to the bus. We sat there, waiting for like half an hour when we started wondering why the locals didn't join us yet. Looking at the time it was lunch time, and you can already guess where the locals where. So on we went to a small restaurant to get some noodle soup ourselves before we got back in the bus. It was around 14:00 when we left again and we were wondering if everything went according to the 24 hour journey time table...

After what seemed like hours driving slowly up and down steep roads we stopped in a town to drop of a big group of the locals, the luggage and one tourist. He thought it would be a smart idea to split the journey in more days than one continious drive. Now we had plenty of room in the bus but we were getting hungry again. Around 18:00 we stopped in a city and for the first time the driver actually spoke to us and said that we could get dinner here. Before that we tried to get information about the trip and why he filled the bus with way too many f***ing people, but he didn't answer our questions (at the start we were asking nicely, just take my word for it).

So, after dinner we went on again and the driver told us that we would arrive in Luang Prabang at 22:00. Now this was the point where I got sick of the bus since I had a headache that was getting worse and the roads were too bumpy to sit comfortably. I had the row in the back with 5 seats and decided to try and get some sleep. Even with the bumps I managed to get some hours and woke up at 00:00. We were not yet in Luang Prabang but the driver said that we were close. We arrived at 00:30 and we were awaited by tuctucs. Finally tuctucs again. I like them because they go for fixed prices and are cheaper than taxis. 5 out of 8 tourists on the bus, me not being one of the five, had a reservation in a hostel so we went there. Unfortunately they did not have extra rooms and I ended up sleeping on the wooden floor in the lobby since I could not find a room anywhere else in the street. They were kind enough to give me a blanket and I got some blankets from the other two tourists who were also sleeping on the floor but in their sleeping bags.

So that was the best start I could wish for in Laos; a 30 hour bus drive and sleeping on a wooden floor to finish it up. But I made it and saved a lot of money while doing so. After some broken hours of sleep on the floor I thanked the manager for his hospitality and went looking for a hostel since he had no rooms available the day after. I arrived in a new hostel and payed a reasonable price, $3,5, for a night. I dumped my stuff, took a shower and walked around LP. It was an oasis of peace. No honking, no litter and not a lot of people. I liked to have some quiet time and a place to stay for a bit longer than the usual 2 to 3 days so I decided to stay for 8 days.

I have enough days to travel so for any other tourist with a limited time frame it would not have been a good decision but for me it was. I spent my days by a day tour to a waterfall, walking around town, being sick for 2 days, having some massages and reading books + drinking beers at a riverview bar called Utopia. I found a great place to eat, a street vendor selling baquettes with tuna (!), for breakfast and lunch and for dinner there was a place at the night market where you could scoop up a full plate of (vegetarian) food for $1,25. In the mean time I ran into some new people but also some familiar faces. Remi (from the voluntary work) walked in my hostel by coincedence and so did Aly and Luke whom I met in Sapa.

Another friend from Heemskerk is travelling through the same countries as I am but he is doing it in one month and flies from big city to big city. He told me that Vientiane is not worth going to and Luke and Aly pointed out that Vang Vieng is really good if you like drugs and drinking. So I decided to do neither of them and then I remembered that I wanted to do the Gibbon Experience in Laos; ziplining from tree to tree several dozens of meters above the ground and sleeping in tree houses.

This was being done in a place called Houay Xai, close to the Thai border in the West. So I decided to make my way up there when I had about a week left before I would meet up with Philipp in Bangkok. It was possibile to go there by bus but also by boat on the Mekong Delta. Since I have seen my fair share of busses I decided to take the boat for a change.

In LP I got some issues with my camera. I was not able to see my pictures and take new pictures since I plugged it in the computer at the hostel to rearrange them. I can luckily already tell you that it is fixed now. I was able to put my pictures on Philipps laptop when we met in Bangkok and he took them home with him so I could format my camera to make it work again.

However, the downside of this is that I was not able to take a lot of pictures in between LP and Bangkok. Another downside is that I will no longer be posting pictures or videos on my blog. It breaks my heart, but that would require me to plug my camera in a computer and Olympus, the manafacturer, told me that the risk will always be there without an Olympus cardreader. Since I will not get one here I will just not risk plugging my camera in anything but the charger to avoid end up loosing all my pictures. I almost threw the computer out of the window when it happened because at some point I actually had empty files on my camera where used to be all my pictures of Vietnam and LP.

I am just so glad that everything is ok now but I will avoid any risk in losing other pictures. That includes uploading pictures on my blog. It also broke my heart that I just had the internal memory on my camera to take pictures of the Gibbon Experience, which was just 15 pictures or 21 seconds of video... But on my way I went, with a tuctuc to the docks of LP to catch the slowboat!

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