Lurang Prabang and the bus ride from hell

I ended up sitting in a tour office for about an hour as the guy who picked me up went to pick up other passengers. Then he walked a group of us to the main road and left us there for almost another hour. When the mini bus arrived it was pretty full, but they stuffed us all on anyway. Then we picked up more people! Oh Vietnam. We were driven out to the south side of Hanoi to a bus station I've never been to before. I am a little more relaxed about travelling in Vietnam then I was when I first arrived but even I was shaken when I saw our bus and the number of people waiting to get on and the amount of luggage. I had had to pay a little more for my ticket as it was the run up to Tet, I was happy to be getting away from Vietnam and new year. As the luggage was loaded onto the bus all of the westerners pushed their way to the bus entrance, we were all determined that we were going to get a berth and not be stuck on the floor. We all got on, the bus guy had a definite plan in mind with the loading of the passengers,the westerners were followed by the Vietnamese and then finally the Laotians. They were all sat on the floor and in a couple of cases sitting on the feet of the four people in the front berths. I was sat next to a Scandinavian guy, he hardly said a word to me but at least he didn't smell. The journey started out well enough and it was pretty smooth sailing to the Laotian border, although we did arrive there at 8am rather than the promised 5am. I had no problems getting through but most of the other Westerners were getting their visas at the border. The time taken was extended by Vietnamese immigration dealing with our passports after everybody else on the bus, regardless of the order in which we rocked up in. There was a further delay as some people argued about what they were being charged for their Laotian visas and then over the exchange rate they were offered for their VND. It took four hours to complete the crossing. The border crossing is in the mountains, so obviously the road is twisty. In Vietnam the road conditions had been good, that wasn't the case as soon as we got over the border. I am sure the driver was lucky to get to 20mph at any one point. We reached Phonsavan at about 5pm, it soon became clear that we wouldn't be going further for a while. The bus driver and a couple of other guys got out and started to tinker with the bus engine. I hung out with the other passengers, Ben and Skip, a couple of British guys, an American couple, Marcos, a guy from Argentina and a guy from Spain. It started getting dark and I began to think about a bed for the night, I decided that whatever happened I was going to sleep on the bus. At about 10pm, Gerrard the American guy, flipped out at the driver, they had told us nothing, the little information we had gotten we had had from a Vietnamese guy who spoke a little English. Literally two minutes after that we were all back on the bus and on our way. After just over 24 hours on the bus I was on the final leg to Lurang Prabang. We arrived into Lurang Prabang at about 5am, it was still dark and cold and misty with a fine rain. Of course there was a tuk tuk waiting but a group of us decided to walk into town. The driver had told us that it was about five kms to the town centre, it ended up only being about 2kms. On the way into town I saw some monks out collecting alms. Laos is a heavily Buddhist country and Lurang Prabang is the centre of that. Every morning the monks from all of the temples, there are a lot of temples, come out and collect donations of food from the local populace. People give alms as a way of securing blessings from the monks. I was glad I got to see it, especially as we were a little out of the town centre and so there were no tourists around. Ironic considering that I am a tourist. I separated from the group and went to the hostel that I'd booked, they let me straight in as I had already paid for the previous night! After a shower I set out for a look around town. The town sits on a peninsula created by the convergence of the Mekong and Nam Khan rivers and being flat is fairly easy to walk around. The temples are very different from those in Vietnam or in Japan, the ones in Laos are heavily decorated and very colourful. And all of the monks do walk around in orange robes, in Vietnam they wear brown robes. Every where you go in the town there are monks walking around and they enforce the cover up rule for women when they go into a temple. Here as a woman you cannot come into contact with the monks, so different from the Japanese monks. I bumped into Marcos in the town and we went to the National Museum together, it's the former summer palace of the Laotian royal family. In a small room at the side of the main building is the Phra Bang, a Buddhist statue supposedly made in Sri Lanka and after which Lurang Prabang is named. I left Marcos after the museum and walked across the Nam Khan river on one of the bamboo bridges that the locals build in the dry season. It is such a beautiful place. I watched the sunset with Leah and Gerrard from Wat Chom Si, a temple that sits on a hill in the middle of the town. I left them, had dinner and had an early night. Whatever else I may have to say about my hostel, I couldn't complain about the bed, it was wide and comfortable. The following morning I bumped into Marcos again and we had breakfast together. He then invited me to join him and some other guys who had been on the bus to go to the near by waterfall. The two British guys and three Australians were staying at the same guesthouse and were hanging out together. After a while we left their guesthouse, had brunch and then got a tuk tuk out to Kuang Si falls. We got dropped off in a generic parking area and had to walk up to the bottom of the pools at the base of the falls. The path takes you through a bear sanctuary, which was a nice surprise. The water in the pools is an azure blue and as the pools are surrounded by lush green vegetation it looks like something out of a movie. We spent a few hours swimming and jumping into the water and then taking photos. I had a great time, it was nice to have company. We met up later for dinner and then ended up at Utopia, a bar that sits overlooking the Nam Khan river. It had been a good day.