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Dear Family and Friends,

Picture this.

It’s 2 AM. You’re sitting on a broken down bus in the middle of the Laotian countryside. Despite attempts by an on-board ‘mechanic’ to get the wheels back in motion, the bus hasn’t moved in the past three hours. You look survey the situation with squinty eyes, red from exhaustion. Judging by the avocado green curtains and cigarette burns in the upholstery, this bus probably survived the American war of the 1960’s. Now you have witnessed its final moments. The toilet is nonfunctional (probably since the 80’s). The crew doesn’t speak English. You haven’t eaten dinner. It’s pitch black outside.

What do you do?

*

My time in Luang Prabang was drawn to a close on Saturday morning. It was a lovely three weeks of volunteering with Big Brother Mouse, eating delicious foods from the night market, bumping into random friends and hanging out with novice monks. But the final leg of this journey awaits me, and I had to get going.

So I booked myself a Saturday ticket to Vientiane, where later in the week I’m scheduled to jump across the Laos-Thai border and ride a 12-hour train to Bangkok. I had chatted with various westerners about the best options to transfer to the Laotian capital (Vientiane), and was counseled to take the VIP bus, as it featured more roomy seating, bigger windows to appreciate the stunning Laos countryside and even a buffet lunch. On a previous trip to Nong Khiaw, I had discovered that the van service was cramped and toilet-less. So I figured that I’d treat myself to a bit of luxury – VIP service! Hello!

But little did I know that, from the start, we were doomed.

A sleepy-eyed man arrived at my guesthouse on Saturday morning and rolled me into the back of his tuk-tuk, which was destined for the Luang Prabang bus station. Upon arrival I picked up my ticket, quickly grabbed a condensed-milk-coffee and then found the bus bound for Vientiane. After I heaved my book-laden backpack into the baggage compartment, my eyes surveyed the bus/beast. The hood of the engine was open, and a small army of Laotian mechanics was buzzing about with various degrees of concern on their faces.

‘Oh, dear,’ I thought to myself, ‘this could get interesting.’

We sat in the station for nearly thirty minutes, waiting. I was unsure if it was a mechanical delay, or an administrative problem. But, finally, the bus lurched forward, and I inserted my ear-buds to relax to my reliable travel playlist. But before the first song was finished, the bus stopped at a petrol station, and inserted itself into a long line of vehicles.

‘WHAT?’ I thought, ‘Why on earth did they not fill up with petrol BEFORE boarding the people? This is fucking ludacris.’

‘Hey Daniel,’ I argued, ‘remember that you’re in Laos. You can’t transfer your expectations of how things should be done. That’s called ethnocentrism.’

‘But I LIKE the way that my country does certain stuff,’ I retorted to myself, ‘It makes more sense.’

‘Suck it up, Buttercup,’ I ended the discussion.

Again, after this second delay, we set forth. I restarted my iPod, and the familiar sounds of Bon Iver, Alanis Morissette, Great Lake Swimmers and Lucinda Williams provided the soundtrack to the drifting countryside. The bus crawled around steep mountain corners and lurched over the derelict ‘paved’ roads. I was wedged between the window and a tight-faced, furry European man who looked like a sundried version of Robin Williams. It was certainly less than what I imagined VIP service to provide, but as long as the bus kept moving forward, I would be happy.

And then at approximately 10 AM we had our first mechanical failure. At the top of a hill, the engine simply stopped and the passengers piled out to sprinkle bamboo shoots with swollen bladders, smoke cheap cigarettes and jabber on mobile devices. The locals and foreigners passengers seemed rather unfazed, so I took it as a cue to let my concern be also expulse with my urine.

The mechanic/magician worked his technical/sorcerer prowess, and after a twenty-minute delay, off we went again. We lasted another couple hours before another breakdown. This time it because a familiar routine of bus evacuation, pissing on the side of the highway and kicking rocks to pass the time.

Around 3 PM, the bus pulled into a dingy little parking lot. This time the break was for nothing broken. Instead, we were offered our buffet lunch, and another opportunity to kick rocks. Because we were already two hours delayed, the lunch was cold and shriveled, and my stomach was a tight knot from the previous hours invested in not barfing. But, to be fair, the rocks I kicked were certainly above-average rocks.

Back again we clambered onto the prehistoric bus, a mix of locals and westerners that were in the process of sharing a character-testing, team-bonding bonding experience that corporate offices might pay equivalencies of five figures.

This one only cost $17 a person. And you get a free version of Robin Williams.

The journey proceeded, with another breakdown at 7 PM, which lasted over an hour and involved Laotian men crawling under the bus to jack up the front passenger-side wheel and remove something that appeared to once have been a shock absorber. I was tempted, but ultimately found it inappropriate, to approach them and tell them that the shock absorbers were the least of our concern.

But sometimes it’s best to just keep one’s mouth shut. This is the lesson that never stops teaching.

We started again around 9 PM, and drove another kilometer down the road. And then stopped.

[If you find that this story is becoming monotonous and predictable, you’re absolutely right!]

This time I didn’t exit the bus. At the last town before the most recent breakdown a handful of westerners got off, probably to check themselves into some sort of therapy clinic necessary to processes the frustration from the day’s events. The upside was that I now had two seats to myself. I curled up – in the best way that a 6-foot-2 man can curl up on two bus seats – and drifted off to sleep.

I awoke at 2 AM to relative quiet. Some people were whispering; the French couple in front of me was strategizing an escape plan. But there was no more clanging of a wrench trying to fix a gasket or a crowbar massaging the engine. The mechanic had clearly let this beast pass on to the place that buses go when buses die.

Outside it was pitch black. The interior of the bus was steamy from the respiration of 30-odd passengers trapped in her bowels, and smelled of uncertainty. The passengers didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to do. If it were daylight, I would have probably built a kayak from bamboo and monkey intestines, and simply drifted down to Vientiane. But I’m just not as MacGyver-y in the dark.

So I sat there and accepted that I would die alone and odorous on a Laotian highway.

And then as if the bus had unexpectedly burst into flames, the people started jumping from their stained velour seats and started suddenly exiting. Another bus had stopped in front of us, and we began running to it like hungry contestants of Survivor trying to snag a Twinkie™.

We boarded the non-VIP bus. I crawled over burlaps sacks of onions and rice, and found a seat beside a clearly irate Austrian woman who had also survived the day’s fiascos and a bleary-eyed, orange-clad, novice monk who was undoubtedly confused as to why a bunch of whities had suddenly piled onto his bus, seeking amnesty from the night.

The bus felt strong and launched into motion. The repetitive Thai/Laos music did not bother me. They could have played a Justin Bieber karaoke DVD on repeat, and I would have been satisfied. As long as I was off the death bus.

The motion enabled me to drift off again.

As the crow flies, it’s approximately 300 kilometers between my departure city of Luang Prabang and my destination of Vientiane. The savior bus pulled into the terminating station at 6 AM.

It took 22-hours to travel 300 kilometers.

And as I stepped off the bus to meet a myriad of men, each offering me a tuk-tuk ride, I could do nothing but chuckle.

‘Guys, where were you 16 hours ago?!?!’

And they just stared blankly at me.

*

With love from Vientiane,

xoxo

Daniel

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