Sunday, December 13, 2009

The cock with nine lives - Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng

Being on the road .... if I thought it had gotten a little hair raising in northern Thailand I was in no way prepared for what lay ahead in Laos.
We headed off for Vang Vieng from Luang Prabang in a minivan, after a tense few moments at the 'bus station' where the driver waited hopefully as the falang stood around wondering how there seemed to be one seat less than required. In Laos of course you can always fit between seven and ten more people in than originally thought so this wasn't a problem for long. Although a grumpy German couple was seperated and I was stuck next to the grumpier version, who managed to complain incessantly. Bleh.

Hmmm, where will we put everyone!

While the Lonely, and often off-track, Planet guide warned us about the windy roads in Thailand, I seemed to have missed the Travel Sickness, Animal and Children Dodging as you Fly around Precipices chapter in Laos.

This road is not for the faint hearted, I am not faint hearted, and even I squirmed a bit (okay, a LOT), but it is stunning with giant mountains looming up on either side.

Villages line the sides of the mountain and you get a great view of Laos life. Women wrapped in sarongs head off to bathe in the nearest river, toddlers wander into the road, often you see 3 year olds with a baby on their back.

There is an interesting driving technique which involves the hooter. This entails hooting everytime you skid around a corner to warn oncoming traffic of your presence. Hooting at the cows and dogs, at least one giant pink pig and many many chickens.

The animals seem much more intelligent than ours back home, and they give you what I perceive to be a dirty look before strolling out of your way.

So the six hours goes something like this: swerve, hoot, swerve, hoot, dodge dog, swerve, hoot, hoot, dodge pig, child, swerve -  '"Ëvy do you want a cookie"/ dirty look from a green-looking Evy/"Yeah I don't want one either"says a green-looking Fran. - swerve, hoot, drive over Rooster.

Hold up.

"Oh my word," I am sure I said....." is it ALIVE???"

Sure enough we look back and the rooster totters off, no worse for the wear.

At some point the driver stops the minibus..... we all climb out to stretch our legs as he appears to be filling up the thingy with water, the radiator or something. Even I know you don't do this with the engine running.




Water explodes all over the bus, luckily our nimble, and now very stressed and mumbling driver, hops out the way. He carries on filling it up. We later notice all our bottles of water have disappeared hmmmm so he used ours.

We helpfully mop up our seats and the windscreen and off we go again.

As the sun sets we all stick our camera's out the window to try and get a shot. It is magnificent. Some enterprising fellow pretends he needs to stop for a pee so we can get a shot of the majestic crags with the ball of fire dipping heavy in the sky.

Our driver, who is now losing popularity fast, very unhelpfully stops at the only point in the entire winding road with no view. I climb on the roof for a shot.



 

When we stopped for a toilet break all the girls took one look at the squatting facilities and pondered the options.
"I," I said triumphantly..... "have a flashlight!"
I then looked into the dark bush and everyone follows my gaze as we achieved silent consensus that it would be the jungle!
In a straight line we file into a spot we hoped would be out of sight, giggling and stumbling in the dark.
"So, find a spot, and I will put the light off so no one can see us," I said.

And one, two, three down we went en masse!

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," said an Irish girl in a lilting accent, "are there snakes here?"

"I dunno, we will know if they bite you on the bum," I offered helpfully.

Needless to say we jumped up very quickly amid much shrieking to where the rest of the bus stood looking rather bemused!

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