I hate long bus journeys! When the VIP bus turned up (an hour and a half late) it looked a hell of a lot like a jumbo tuk tuk, in fact so like, that it was indeed a jumbo tuk tuk, we cruised around Vientienne till they had packed 14 of us foreigners (plus luggage) into the mobile shoebox. I had the best seat on the machine, right behind the cab where the engine is, it was roaringly hot!
Thank god it wasn't that far to the terminal and indeed there awaited the living cliche that is the VIP tourist bus, it had a tacky painting of Ariel (the little mermaid) down the side and I squeezed in next to the guy who was seated next to me, there is no arm rest between the seats which makes them a little too intimate if you are not traveling together for my tastes, but none the less we got underway. I believe there was a toilet on the bus and I even looked for it at one point, to no avail. The downstairs area of the bus has a VIP lounge area, where in theory people can sit about, but in Asia this space in reality is packed with people and luggage as well.
The onboard entertainment was ghastly, you know that so bad it cycles right round to being "enterpainment", a hideous collision of lack of talent and over exposure, tearing my eyes away was almost impossible. there was the girl in the sequined mini with the bad background dancers, the two guys who semi-sang semi-spoke there duet in front of obviously (badly synced and unrealistic) digitally generated backdrops, their dearth of singing talent was only eclipsed by the complete absence of anything remotely resembling rhythm in their tortured gyrations. Third was this girl whose video told the story of how she fancied this bloke, secretly took his picture (on her phone) then photoshopped them into a picture together, then of course she walks into him falls over and drops the book with the photo which he then sees, instead of the normal reaction you or I would have "this obsessive weirdo I didn't know existed is stalking me", they of course get together ???!? The blessing was that all though it was karaoke, no-one (thank god) attempted to sing along, visions of Cliff Richard's summer holiday swim dizzyingly in my head as I pray for it to stop.
Luckily it did stop and then they put on the Peter Jackson version of "King Kong" but it was at least half way through and after half an hour in which the thing kept breaking up and pixelating horribly we returned to (the same three) karaoke songs, arrrgh, luckily the bus paused long enough for me to whip out my contact lenses, put in my ipod earphones and attempt to sleep. Soon after they turned the screen off and we all got some sleep only to be awoken in the morning by, yes you guessed it the same three karaoke numbers. I was really, really glad I had packed my warm jacket, those air-con busses are freezing!
On arriving in Paksie I wandered vaguely away from the bus station till I finally found a cafe, as I was drinking my banana lassi I struck up a conversation with the two guys sitting opposite me (they had broad kiwi accents). Richard and Brian, a father and son team who were on a cycling trip from Vietnam (where Richard worked for the red cross), they invited me to join there trip to "wat phou champasak" the local Angkor era ruin, they had hired a car for the day, so me (and all my stuff) piled into the car and off we went.
The road at one point crosses a river, and the Lao version of a car ferry has to be seen to be really appreciated I think. All of the boats here look like the hollowed trunks of trees, long, thin and with a tendency to roll in the water, to make a car ferry they simply lash a raft like platform on top of three of these little boats and attach a long tail motor. It was fun, the ruin is in an amazing location with a limestone cliff behind it and a really cool staircase with flowering frangipani trees arching up to create a cool canopy over the top, the ruin itself isn't up to much (especially if you have been to Siem reap) but it was an unexpected free bonus!
When I got back I eventually managed to find a guest house and have the cutest tiny lizard in it, although he seems to have not realised I am a particularly large animal and crawling on me is probably not in his best interests, in fact he just crawled into my t.shirt and is tickling my armpit, (tee hee).
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