Jan 9, 2015
This was not my first time taking an overnight bus (Sevilla to Madrid in Spain) however this was my first time taking an overnight SLEEPING bus. The plan was to leave Chiang Mai via minivan at 9:30am and would take 7 hours to get to the Thailand/Laos border in Huay Xai.Why 7 hours you ask? Because along the way, we stop a total of 3 times. Once at a restaurant to grab some foodies/bathroom break, then again at the White Temple and then finally at a little town called Chiang Khong which is kind of the last town before the border area. At Chiang Khong we were split between the people crossing the border by bus and the people crossing by boat. All the people crossing by bus got these little stickers (important stickers!) and a bagged lunch/dinner which was this sad looking sandwich, 2 bananas and a bottled water.
On this super long journey, I was the 3rd to last person to get picked up and I got to sit at the passenger seat. Dunno why but I didn’t complain. In my mind I was planning on sleeping HOWEVER the driver decided to call everyone on his phonebook and chatted the entire drive to Chiang Khong! When we were getting our stickers and being split up, I met Gustave. He was on the same minivan as me and he thought I was talking to the driver the whole time! Haha! I’m Asian but I ain’t this type of Asian. Gustave and I basically buddied up until we got to Luang Prabang.
Back to getting our sad dinner, we bus people got back on the minivan, drove for 5 mins, driver got his pay (?), drove another 8 mins to the Thailand border, got out, passed through immigration, got on a double decker bus, drove for 5 mins, got off, filled out the Loas visa application, waited, ate the sad dinner, waited til they called your name, paid $36, got my passport back with the Laos visa, our group with the same stickers boarded a tuk tuk that drove for about 12 mins to the bus terminal (so much dust!), got some snacks (Ovaltine crackers!), took off our shoes and boarded the sleeping bus.
Con: there was a lady (local) laying on my “bed”. Her bed was the one in front of mine.
Pro: Gustave and this other girl from our sticker group ended up switching seats so he got to sleep next to me.
Pro: I got the window seat which is what I generally prefer.
Con: I kept hitting my knee on the bus because the seats weren’t big enough for me to curl in and I generally can’t sleep on my back.
Pro: I had ear plugs.
Con: My ear plugs were basically worthless.
Con: The women in front of us talked as if they were yelling at each other.
Con: The lady in front of me, at random times during the night would play her dang music for everyone to hear. At one point, a song startled me (and others) awake that I decided to tell her to “please put it lower” in my non-nice voice. She got the hint and didn’t play it again.
Con: Why did the bus make so many stops??
Pro: The bus finally stopped its super bumpy ride when the driver decided he wanted to sleep too.Con: The bus driver woke up at 6am, the time we were supposed to arrive in Luang Prabang.
Con: We arrived at Luang Prabang 6 hours later.
Once we got off the bus and grabbed our stuff from the chaos of people grabbing their things and tuk-tuk drivers shouting stuff, I lost Gustave. Haha so I followed a crowd of people getting into a tuk-tuk, gave the driver my hostel info and were on our way. The tuk-tuk drive was about 10 mins and cost around $3.
I had such high expectations for this sleeping bus…
