千里之行 始于足下

For your convenience, please refer to The Journey for the itinerary and the latest updates.

Weather: Excellent

Distance covered today: 194km
Distance traveled from Guangzhou: 2,223km
Distance remaining to Singapore: 2,881km

Fact of the day: Luang Prabang was the royal capital of Laos until the Communist takeover in 1975.

Like the first two days of the new year, the third day would be spent on traveling. Comparatively, the traveling time for the day would be a relatively short at six hours.

I saw the three Frenchmen who had been with me from Sapa; we were going separate ways as they were heading north towards Luang Namtha. However, the French exchange couple would be on the same bus as me (50,000 LAK, ~6hours).

To show the extent of Chinese influence in Udomxai, Chinese characters are visible everywhere there.

Off we went on the minibus.

I would describe the journey as uneventful. The roads were in pretty good conditions and I couldn’t recall any roadblocks along the way until….

The minibus wobbled to a stop outside a village. Luang Prabang would be roughly 35km away.

All the passengers disembarked and the driver was trying to fix the problem.

The male half of the French couple asked me about my opinion of the situation. I thought it was obvious that the axle had broke and it was unlikely that the driver could fix the problem on the spot. One of the locals had already hitched a ride with a group of motorcyclists who had rode past.

Not wasting anymore time, the French lad waved down the next van which passed us. The van driver agreed to take the five foreign tourists on board. Besides me and the French couple, there were a Swiss lady and yet another Frenchman. The Swiss lady remarked that of all the transportation that she had taken in Northern Laos, the minibus that we took was the newest-looking. However she didn’t expect that it would be the only one which let her down.

It didn’t take us long to unload our stuff from the minibus’s roof and hop on to our new ride. We also had to share our space with other co-passengers.

Our benefactor dropped us at the Northern Bus Terminal as his vehicle couldn’t enter the UNESCO Heritage Site area (if I didn’t guess wrongly what he meant). He didn’t ask for any payment and was genuinely glad to help us. Laos was a welcome change from Vietnam as the Lao people seem gentler and friendlier.

Reaching Luang Prabang (KM 2223) represented a milestone. I was already a week on the road and half way through my travel in terms of time. The toughest region to travel in (between Sapa & Luang Prabang) was behind me. A week ago I was still in chilly Guangzhou. In a week’s time I would be back in places familiar to me. Passing through places in my journey so far made me wonder about how much I would miss if I took a 3.5 hour back instead.

Finding places to stay in Luang Prabang wasn’t difficult; finding one to match the cost and quality of the one that I stayed in Udomxai was next to impossible though. It was the high season and there were enough tourists to match the prices. After looking at several, I settled for a room with a double bed and no attached toilet for 70,000 LAK.

Luang Prabang is an alluring little town with plenty of charm. Moving at a languid pace like the Mekong River which it sits on, the town exudes the class and sophistication which only royal capitals are capable of carrying off.

Regardless of Lao-styled temples adorned with ornate carvings or French-styled villas designed with a touch of Lao influence, the buildings were all gorgeous under the setting sun.

As in Sapa, the tourists most probably outnumbered the locals in January but there was hardly any hard-selling seen or heard. I took a walk along the main boulevard before strolling along the banks of Mekong.

I would end this post with Luang Prabang’s beautiful sunset over Mekong.

For your convenience, please refer to The Journey for the itinerary and the latest updates.

Weather: Fine

Distance covered today: 215km
Distance traveled from Guangzhou: 2,029km
Distance remaining to Singapore: 3,075km

Fact of the day: The Tay Trang/Sop Hun border between Vietnam and Laos (the one I used in this entry) was only opened to foreign travelers since May 2007.

The usual suspects all turned up at the bus station before the scheduled time of 5.30 am. Two more French turned up and brought the total to six. I would later find out that they were university students on exchange in Shanghai.

BP and I were browsing the stalls beside the bus stations before boarding the bus. They were open early for business and I decided to grab some biscuits as I was left with quite a bit of VND. This proved to be one of the best decisions for the trip.

My bus for the trip:

According to a friend who could read Korean (no prize guessing who), one of its former incarnation was a bus belonging to Hansei University.

The bus got moving before 6am but stopped off somewhere to pick up more passengers and cargo. Another French backpacker caught the bus which brought the total number of French to seven. Although the border was rumored to be 35km away, the bad conditions of both the roads and the bus made the journey seemed forever. Along the way I was treated to one of the most surreal sights in the world; felt as if we were above the clouds.

It was already bright (around 8am) when the bus arrived at the immigration building on the Vietnamese side (KM 1849).

The Vietnamese officials at the border were friendly and I got stamped out in no time. We would wait a while before everyone had their documents checked.

The Lao immigration building was several kilometers away. Laos would be the eight Southeast Asian countries that I visited. Only Brunei, Philippines and Timor Leste left!

The Thai guys and I didn’t need a visa so we handed in our passports after writing the arrival forms. One of the immigration officials asked us whether we had any VND which we wanted to get rid of. I didn’t think that the exchange rate was fantastic but I got rid all my VND for some Lao Kip (LAK).

I was charged 7,000 LAK for the privilege of entering Laos on a Saturday; part of it was “stamping fee” and the other part was “extra time charge”. I forgot the breakdown but there was a proper receipt. It seemed that these fees were ‘official’ so I wasn’t too unhappy. The Europeans had it worse as they had to pay extra time charge for their Lao visa-on-arrival (on top of stamping fee plus late charge).

BP and I chatted a bit more while waiting for the rest of the passengers to be legally checked into Laos. He thought that all the extra fees seemed to be a ripoff; my (weak) explanation was that corruption in other countries (Cambodia for instance) in the region was much worse. BP didn’t like Vietnam so much as well; the Vietnamese are generally less friendlier than Thais and hardly anyone speak any English outside Sapa.

The bus had to stop again due to road works after barely leaving the Lao immigration building.

Luckily we only needed to wait about 15 minutes.

We came across quite a number of bald hills on the windy road. It was kinda worrying as the lack of trees increases the likelihood of landslides.

I drifted in and out of sleep for the remaining journey to Muang Khua. Although the distance between the Muang Khua and the border was only 75km, the bus’s wretched conditions meant that we rarely went beyond 20 km/h.

The bus finally reached Muang Khua (KM 1924) at almost 2pm. We would need to cross the Nam Ou river for our onward journey.

One had to pay 2,000 LAK to cross the river in the long boat.

Across the bank, we met another traveler coming from the other direction. He had arrived earlier in the day from Udomxai and pointed us the way to the bus station. BP and some of the travelers needed some local money but the bank in Muang Khua was closed on a Saturday afternoon. Arriving at the station (sawngthaew from ferry crossing point 4,000 LAK per person), I bought myself a ticket to Udomxai. I forgot the time of departure but I was quite certain that it was between 3.30pm and 4.00pm.

It turned out that not all the travelers would get on the same minivan; BP and the Thai guys would have to wait for the next departure. As I was among the last to board the bus, I got a makeshift seat on the aisle along with a few others. The minivan was definitely in a better condition compared to the cross-border bus and so were the roads. We were in Udomxai in less than the three hours expected.

The minivan would pass through Udomxai town before the bus station and I was surprised to see that many of the shops there had Chinese signs. Apparently a large number of the residents there are Chinese. Once at the bus station, I checked out the timings for next day’s buses to Luang Prabang. After noting down the time of the earliest bus, I saw two guesthouses across the street. The guy outside the one without Chinese signboard beckoned me over and asked me whether I was looking for accommodation.

He showed me the better room first (is it an essential sales tactic?) which came with attached bathroom, two beds and satellite TV. As in Cambodia, the satellite TV in Laos came from Thailand’s True Corporation. I asked that if there was anything cheaper and I was shown a room with a large bed, no TV or attached shower. The choice wasn’t too difficult as I didn’t mind watching some movies to while out the night. It turned out that HBO was showing The Dark Knight and I ended up watching quite a bit of it before convincing myself the need to find some dinner.

I went to town and decided to eat some barbecue. The girl at the store couldn’t reply to my English and I tried my luck with Mandarin. She replied in very thickly accented Mandarin (almost incomprehensible to me) about the prices and I asked for rice to go with my food. It was a welcoming meal as my last proper one was the dinner the previous night before at DBP.

Like DBP where evenings are as exciting as watching grass grow, I retreated back to my comfortable room after dinner. HBO was showing Charlie Wilson’s War and No Country for Old Men after the Dark Knight.

I caught the former but was too tired for the latter. I also made a mental note to read up about Charlie Wilson when I got the chance.