Our adventure started on the boat back down the river to the nearest town, Nong Kiew, where only an hour later we could get on a bus/taxi-type vehicle which would take us about a third of the way where we could get a connecting bus. The journey was pretty full of people but the scenery was stunning - staggeringly beautiful mountains covered with forest. As we got higher though the views were less spectacular as we were in the mountain plains rather than looking at the mountains. But still it was very beautiful. Plus we were the only tourists on the bus which made us feel a bit more authentic.
We were dropped off at a guest house with a big old fat dude who spoke English and we (stupidly) got out of the bus. It was about 2pm and we were hoping to get at least to the next village that day and he assured us a bus would be coming "soon". Kieran went for a stroll round the village and the fat dude impressed me with his English (yawn). After a while we managed to elicit from him that in fact the only bus going in the direction we wanted was a night bus that passed by at about 11.30pm. Shit. We went off for a stroll round the village and had a swim in the river, finishing off by admiring his wife weaving in the afternoon light. It was admittedly a pretty spot but we were kinda eager to get on and a bit annoyed that we had been misled by this dude.
Sabadie Sabadie (hello hello) lots of naked children in the river having fun
We settled in for the long haul, and had a pretty nasty dinner of packet noodle soup and warm Beer Laos, even managing to read our books until sundown when it became quickly apparent that this guest house had no electricity so we idled away the hours from 7pm with the fat dude telling us stories. Well, it might have been interesting if he had spoken slightly better English and let us have a conversation with him but we realised pretty quickly that his name translated to something like "Mr Monologue" and the next few hours actually stretched out in time so even seconds seemed slow.
Mr Monologue's wife
He assured us he would wake us at the correct time to catch the bus if we wanted to go to sleep and kindly provided a cushion and a plastic mat to put on the floor (we, however, suspected that it might be prudent to stay awake ourselves). Meanwhile, as his house was hanging over the river we were being eaten alive by mosquitos. 11.15pm finally came around and we duly left him snoring on the floor of his room while we waited in the perfect darkness in the road for a bus.
11.30 came and went....midnight....12.30am well buses are often late in South East Asia right? ... 1am and Mr Monologue actually came out bleary-eyed to lock up and found us still sitting patiently waiting (our bums had gone way beyond numb from sitting on wooden benches many hours ago). We gave it until 1.15am and then agreed that the bus wasn't coming tonight.
He did give us a (pretty skanky) room to sleep in and at 6.30am when the next door neighbour put on their radio full blast we packed up and left. Did I mention all the houses were made of bamboo so sound proofing not such a great thing. Not to mention the cockerels crowing at 4am onwards.
We walked into to town with our backpacks (about 2km) determined not to have to wait until the next bus that night. We got in the first bus we saw which was going all the way back where we'd come from - Luang Prabang. Sod it. We hot-footed it back to LP and checked back into our nice hotel and decided that old jars are rubbish anyway, and that we're not cut out for adventures, that's our story and we are sticking to it.
Nice view, but where the hell is the bus?
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