Dien Ben Phu, Laos, and the in-between

Traversing from Sapa to Nong Khiaw in Laos consumed the better part of three days.  On the minibus from Sapa to Dien Ben Phu, I met Saskiya, a Dutch woman who is my age, and David, from Paris. Reaching Dien Ben Phu with daylight to spare, the three of us climbed to see a statue commemorating the Vietnamese victory in expelling the French, as apparently that campaign culminated at DBP.  Later that evening Saskiya and I went to a coffee shop buzzing with locals, where I had one of the best hot chocolates of my life!

But really, this is all just a preamble for what happened next: the bus to Laos. We arrived at the bus station 20 minutes early (normally this is plenty) to find the bus packed to the gills. Our bags were "placed" on the bus, which really means put in the aisles where a million Vietnamese immediately sat on them, leaving 8 of us to sit on the hard floor in roughly the first 7' of aisle.  It took 7 hours to reach our destination in Laos, including 2 hours of haggling over "weekend" fees at the Laos border. In that time, we disembarked 4 times, and each time tried to improve our lot, from floor ("I'm a human not a sack of flour"), to arm rest ("this is my arm rest, I am sitting here!"), to, finally, seat, where the guy I stole the seat from proceeded to sit on my shoulder for 2 hours. The only reason this isn't the worst bus ride of my life is that at no point did I think I might actually die. Nope, that honor remains Nepal's.

Ugh. When I got off that bus, I immediately bought a Beer Lao and took a photo of how I felt. Enjoy!

That night as I impatiently waited for our food, Saskiya laughed and told me to chill out, explaining we were no longer in the businessland of Vietnam: things happen now on "Laos time".  I was hungrily hardly amused with this answer to poor customer service!

However, the next morning while we chugged downriver past jungle-clad karsts to Nong Khiaw on the Nom Ou river, I began to relax and let Laos seduce me.  In Nong Khiaw we visited a local cave where Laotians hid during US bombing (Laos and Cambodia were bombed as the Ho Chi Minh trail meandered loosely along their borders) and spent a fun afternoon tubing a near-currentless river.  A few days of waterfall hikes, Indian food, bad movies, hammock lazing, and chocoballs, and I could feel myself slowing down a bit, matching the pace of river life. I think  I'll come to appreciate this Laos time after all.