The Sleeper Bus

The next morning there was a wonderful changing of the guard type ceremony at the border opening time, a mad scramble of moneychangers, form filling and passport control, and after an altercation with a female money changer ( we still can't work out if she was trying to rip us off), and a moving farewell to China, we were bundled onto the back of a truck and driven through a no-mans land and entered Laos.

Laos passport control appears to be in the middle of nowhere. In fact , there is a village a few kilometres, away, but this was not made clear to us. So once clearing customs, a painless exercise, one is confronted with a small array of transport options. We wanted to go to Udomxai which is on the main route to Luang Prabang, which is the main route south, which, one would assume, would be the most travelled route. However not one of the "array of transport options" was heading that way.

Very frustrating.

Finally I managed to persuade the driver to drop us off at a crossroads which led to where we wanted to go. All we had to do then was to wait for the mini bus to fill......which meant waiting for two hours as other passengers meandered over the border. Whilst waiting I approached a sleeper bus which was enroute from Kunming to Luang Prabang, a journey of some 24 hrs or so but could not get any sense from the drivers or passengers and it took off before I could do more.

Sleeper buses are long distance buses that have no seats. Instead they have three rows of single bunk beds running the length of the bus ending with a quadruple bed at the rear. You can prop yourself up whilst travelling but basically stay in a lying position, unless you are a yoga black belt ( do they have them?) and can assume the lotus position for hours on end.

The buses have no facilities. They stop for lunch and dinner and toilets stops are on a needs be basis!

We hadn't considered them a viable means of transport.

However, after eventually leaving the border with a full mini-van and being deposited at the crossroads in the middle of no-where ( that's a lie there was a small village there), and having no luck talking to the locals regarding ongoing transport, the appearance of the sleeper bus I had approached before seemed like a godsend.

This time I managed to enlist the help of an American soon to be graduated Doctor who spoke some Chinese ( it was a Chinese bus) and he managed to negotiate a price for us with the driver to Luang Prabang...a mere 10 hours away!!! At least we were moving.

We climbed aboard two adjacent top bunks, much to the curiosity and mirth of all the "much younger" passengers and were off. Two minutes into the journey we realised that the swaying upper bunks were not for us and took refuge in the lower quadruple bed that took up the back of the bus.

We had the area to ourselves and it felt like we were travelling in the back of a "rock star ensemble bus" heading toward the next gig. The only problem being that the road to the next gig was diabolical. The Chinese built road lasted about twenty or so kilometres into Laos and then we were on a single laned, rutted back track and lying down on a bouncing bus is not the way to go. Mandy was continually airborne, until she realised we had seat( or in this case bed) belts and so there we were, lying prone, strapped to the bed in the back of a Chinese sleeper bus jolting our way through the mountainous Laos jungle.

We did have pillows and blankets and were able to make ourselves sort of comfortable and the scenery was delightful, thick jungle and beautiful ( although muddy brown) rivers in which children swam and played and basic thatched villages. The road was winding and in places high, but the jungle obscured any precipitace falls, so there was no bus roll calculations to worry about and the condition of the road did not allow for excess speeds, so at least it wasn't terrifying.

Mandy tried to sleep and I pretended I was young again and could take all the jarring the bus was delivering, but I think I did, for the first time, contemplate the comforts of home!!!

As mentioned toilet stops were conducted when required and the jungle the only option. At one stop, Mandy had a most enlightening experience weeing with a Buddhist monk!!!

Five hours is a long time on a sleeper bus and although we had had a short breakdown stop, the lunch break was welcome relief. But after the break it got worse. The driver, refreshed from lunch, changed into shorts (obviously his racing outfit) and with an improvement in road conditions, went for it. The next four hours were like being trapped in that bus in that movie with Sandra Bullock!

Luang Prabang could not come quickly enough. We arrived in the dark (we hate doing that), crammed into a tuk tuk, and managed to find a hotel. After dumping bags we got 50 metres up the street en route to a cold beer when I collapsed. The pretense of being young again after two days of solid travelling gave way to middle age exhaustion.

Poor Mandy spent her first night in long awaited Luang Prabang, comforting her ageing partner!