Sabaidee Everyone.

Unless things go drastically wrong, we'll be leaving Laos tomorrow for northern Thailand. You haven't heard from us much for the past 10 days as we've had our butts firmly planted on various buses and mini-buses throughout Laos. It has been travel, travel, travel. I'll be the first to admit that land transportation in Laos takes WAY longer than I'd expected.

We started off with back to back 10 hour days. First from Vietnam, through 2 communist borders complete with no mans land, a cornucopia of officials being communistically slow with their 16 stamps in each passport, various livestock and the ever-present dogs lounging around the check-points. There was a group of middle-eastern travelers who looked so out of place I can't even begin to describe. The bad outfits these guys had on were too much. They were, surprisingly, having a little trouble getting all of their stamps. When they finally did get their exit stamps (and how much trouble have you EVER had getting an exit stamp???), they budged in front of the Vietnamese and Laos in the Lao entrance line and put their passports on top. I think even the pushy Vietnamese were too stunned to comment.

Vientianne was pretty nice. I actually don't know what nice is anymore. We have seen so few Asian cities that have a nice feel that when we get to a city with a bit of a colonial feel, some restaurants with a moderate amount of ambiance and a nice mixture of food we're tortured between being treated to some civility and a treat for the eyes and betraying our desire to see Asia for what it is…whatever that may be. We did enjoy our nightly aperos on the banks of the Mekong and I appreciate that when you order a bottle of beer, that it's assumed that you're referring to a 640ml bottle. We also rented bikes again which was so great to be able to get a little further and enjoy just that much more freedom. Barbara's bike was called "Miss Kitty" and even the tire treads where little kitten faces…awesome!

Luang Prabang was next. This place was overrun with foreigners and the Laos aren't shy to jack the prices up for falangs. Bikes were 4 times the price that they were in the previous city. We don't mind paying more than the Lao people but does the term gouging doesn't even begin to describe what goes on here. We stayed for just 2 days despite the rave reviews and then headed up the river to Nong Khiaw. This was a 6 hour boat trip that went through some utterly fantastic scenery and countryside. The whole way we would pass little huts on the side of the river, or go by women collecting some river grass, water buffalo sunning themselves…just a fantastic trip. Only a muffler for our engine could have made this trip better. Well, that and no mutiny. Our captain decided to only check everyone's tickets about 4/5s of the way to our destination where he discovered that 2 ladies hadn't exchanged their "day before pre-tickets" for "real tickets".

Ticketing is a whole thesis unto itself here so I won't go on about it, but we sat on a sandbank for about 30 minutes while our captain, who spoke no English, showed obvious signs of displeasure to all of us, who spoke no Laoatian. Barbara did a fantastic job of trying to mediate and pulled out every charade move ever created but the captain was in a tizzy and even pulling two other boats off the river, none of which had any more linguistic bridges on hand, didn't help get things sorted out. In the end, perhaps hunger overcame him and we cruised upriver. He disembarked 30 minutes before our final destination, and then after some mechanical problems we limped to our dock on 3 cylinders only to find him there with some other official. Since our tickets were not in question, we skidaddled to find a place in the remaining daylight.

The coup d'etat of our travel adventures came yesterday. We took 2 separate buses to get to Luang Nam Tha. The first was a little Toyota mini-van. I would guess that its normal maximum capacity would be 12 occupants - tops. We were 19 plus luggage by the time everyone was loaded on. To add to the story, 5 of the nineteen people were Laos who apparently don't travel that well. These curvy roads and our maniac driver were too much and we went through about 30 plastic bags (no exaggeration…the guy in the back row just used the floor, otherwise it would have been more). Despite all this puking, our driver didn't slow down. At one point, as we were passing a gravel truck, a full sized bus came from the other direction and passed us so that we were 3 abreast on barely a 2 lane road.

This mini-bus only got us partway to our final destination. We decided to push on and get it over with in one day so we boarded our next bus. We left the station 45 minutes late but with 2 seats empty. Fear not…we did the usual tour of town and the driver sold the remaining 2 seats, plus pulled out some of the plastic stools that are resident in every bus. Now we were ready to go, right? Wrong. He takes a call, weaving all over the road and driving about 5kmh. We stop…we wait, we all pee on the roadside…we wait. A second bus pulls up.There's, again, no language bridge...there's waiting, there's shuffling. Ultimately everyone squeezes on so there are now 35 people (plus luggage) on a bus with 22 seats. What almost put us over the top is that once everyone was loaded up, our driver and the other driver only then started negotiations as to what our driver should be compensated for all of this.

If I could have possibly budged from my seat I would have punched them both in the throat and driven the bus myself. Deep vein thrombosis? Been there, done that, bought the t-shirt in Laos. At least, due to our excessive load, we had to drive so slowly that only 1 lady got sick, but we got to listen to the rest of the bus horking and spitting for 4 hours. Funtastic, I say!

Well, that was a bit of a rant, but I feel much better now and at a fraction of the price of a therapist. We've only got 10 days left before we fly out. To say that we are unprepared for Japan is an overstatement. At least illegal copies of travel books seem to be everywhere here. Perhaps we can pick something up cheap.

Love to all and we'll see you soon,

Jason & Baebs