VIP = Vomit Inducing Potential

Luang Prabang, Laos - VIP was stamped in big letters on the front of our bus from Vientiane to Luang Prabang and while the bus was decent I think it was more an inference of the twisty trip to be expected from Vientiane to Luang Prabang.

We arrived in Luang Prabang last night after a 10 hour bus ride. Now it is only 380km (~230 miles) from Vientiane to LP but it takes 10 hours as the road twists and turns through the mountains most of the 10 hours (see the sat photo above of part of the route).  We reached an altitude of almost 1500m and then back down to 450m and then back up to 1200m and finally reached LP at 340m above sea level.

At times we could have walked up the hill faster but our bus driver was more than willing to make up time going down the hill.  He took the twists and turns faster than I would want to take them in my BMW!

Luckily neither Betsy nor I have a predilection to motion sickness but the bus ride did claim a couple of victims.

It was a beautiful (if long) ride through the mountains though and our first impressions of Luang Prabang are that it is a very nice town and we are looking forward to spending a few days here.

Tomorrow we get to spend a day with the elephants learning to be Mahouts (elephant trainers). This is probably the thing Betsy is most looking forward to on the trip so I am sure she will provide a detailed post of the experience.

Quietest Capital City in the World?

Vientiane, Laos - That would in fact be Vientiane the capital of Laos.  We spent the last 4 days in the capital and actually didn't do too much.  We saw a couple of wats, walked along the Mekong but mostly just spent two days getting our Thai visas.  Vientiane is a pleasant enough place and very quiet especially compared to other SouthEast Asian capital cities but then there are only 250,000 people in  Vientiane.

As I mentioned we had to get visas for Thailand as the Thai governmennt in their infinite wisdom decided to crack down on people living illegally in Thailand by changing the visa rules a couple of months ago.  Previously if arriving overland into Thailand you were automatically granted a 30 day visas (most western/asian countries) however a lot of guys were staying in Thailand for months if not years and just doing runs to the border with Laos, turning around and getting a new 30 day visa.  Thailand decided to combat this by changing the visa rules so that you can only get a 15 day "visa on arrival" when crossing overland. This would frustrate the guys living in Thailand and force them to leave.  What is has done instead is inconvenience every traveler crossing overland and forced them to get  a visa ahead of time and waste at least 2 days doing it.

Maybe a better solution would have been to limit the number of visas a person could get in a year?  That would stop the perennial overstayers yet not impact tourism.  Better be careful, we don't want logic to get in the way of any decisions.

Anyhow Monday morning we lined up to get a visa took about 3.5 hours, then came back the next day and waited another couple of hours andpicked up our passport.

Painless process, didn't cost any money just was a waste of time. 

So tired....

VIENTIANE, Laos - We are sitting in the restaurant of our hotel waiting for the people who are currently in "our" room to checkout so that it can be cleaned and we can check in.

We took the overnight bus from Pakse to Vientiane a 10 hour trip.  We were "lucky" enough to have booked a "sleeping" bus for this trip.  

Our worst travel experience to date was the overnight train from Hanoi to Hue.  Neither of us are really fans of overnight trips as we don't sleep that well when traveling overnight and last night was no exception.

Walking around Pakse we saw the sleeping bus in a parking lot near our hotel and were quite impressed by it.  It looked very clean,  the pillows looked nice, and it even had a fullsize bathroom (i.e. the door was normal sized not 4 feet high like our bus from Siem  Reap to Phnom Penh)

Anyhow we walked back the next day to book the bus for the following night but the guy in front of us in the queue was taking forever so being to impatient to wait we just decided to walk over to a travel agent to book the bus instead.  

That was a mistake!  When we were dropped of at the bus station the next night there were a bunch of travelers waiting to get on a bus only they weren't getting on our bus they were getting on a nice looking bus parked next to ours!

The tuk tuk that had picked us up at our hotel along with 2 other backpackers had already unloaded our luggage from the top rack into the hold of the bus before we could get out, at least we hoped our luggage was on the bus.

Our bus once again turned out to be completely populated with locals with the exception of two french girls that were backpacking.  We stepped on board and our hearts sank, the bus we were on was nowhere near as nice as the one we had seen the day before and in fact it looked nothing like the other bus which had had cubbyholes and double beds that would sit up like a chaise lounge and curtains for privacy.

Once we had stepped over all the flip flops in the aisle and hopped up to our "bunk" we knew we were in trouble.  The bed measured probably 3' x 5' and was designed for two?  Also the 5' was a bit generous as at about 3 feet we had a rack over the top of the bed for our day packs and from 4 to 5 feet the bed in front sloped downward on an angle such that it was impossible to even lay on your back.  All you could do was lie on your side and wedge your feet under the bed in front!

The mattress was also flat, there was no adjusting the sitting position all you could do was lean your pillow against the luggage rack behind you to sit up.  So we did just that and sat up for the first two hours watching some tv shows on our laptop.  The rest of the bus was completely dark and after two hours we put away the laptop, turned on the ipods and attempted to get to sleep.

Neither one of us could get comfortable and we basically spent the whole night just lying there listening to our Ipod's.  The time actually went fairly quickly and we only made one stop the whole night.

Ten hours later we were in the Lao capital of Vientiane and in a Tuk Tuk headed to our hotel.  Unfortunately we were at our hotel before 7am and the current occupants of our room didn't check out until 12 pm so we had breakfast at the hotel restaurant (very good!), walked around for a couple of hours and then napped on the sofa in the restaurant before finally about 1230 pm we were able to check into our room!

So here we sit in our room trying to stay awake (its 4pm) until a decent hour.  I think tonight we'll just go next door to the hotel restaurant as the food is very good and we are too lazy to head out anywhere.

On Monday we need to head to the Thai Consulate to get a 30 day visa for Thailand as the Thai's in their infinite wisdom have decided to only hand out 15 day visas at the border instead of the usual 30 day visas that until recently they had always granted.  Fifteen days isn't much time to see a country as large as Thailand!

Off to happy hour, some food and then some sleep!