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Vientiane, Laos
17° 58' N 102° 35' E
Jun 29, 2006 02:50
Distance 120km

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Other entries in Vientiane

god.

Text written in: English

oops - I'm off with the photos, so you probably already have an idea of what happened from the last post. sure enough, we get about an hour across the border, the last bus drops us off, and we're on our own, wondering how much extra money this is gonna cost us.

at least we're at an official bus station and in laos, people are actually excited to bargain down the price (especially with 11 of us). I step up to the bargaining plate and get us from $5 down to $3 each. best thing of all, we fill up a songtau so we leave immediately.

pause for a sec to remind you that none of us have slept (or eaten) since yesterday (it's about noon now) and my stomache is still a STRESS BALL from the border crap-ola. it's not the finest hour for anyone. tho best thing with all this exhaustion is the yellers in the group have finally stopped yelling.

after only about 2 hours, the driver slams on the breaks. (seems we're on the "disaster every 2 hours" program) we peek out to see a truck below the road. immediately jump out to investigate. suddenly our bad luck is't so bad compared to what others have been through. sometime this morning, a logging semi maxed out the bridge weight and the bridge won. the windsheild was totally smashed in. didn't see blood but can only imagine..

next thought is of course back to us and our crummy situation. is there another way across? lucky for us, yeah, they've already made a makeshift road across the dry river bed. but UNlucky for us, a bus went on the road before us and got itself stuck. idiot bus driver what were you thinking?!

we wait 45 minutes while they move massive boulders, steal wood planks from the smashed bridge to make ramps (that's fortunate in a bizzaro sort of way) and inch-by-inch move the bus out of the way.

after that was smooth sailing. we pile in, make one more transfer, huddle against the rain, use up the last of my ipod battery :(. one last issue was the local girl who got car sick, puked in a bag and passed it up to us to toss out the back. now if that had burst.... ast least we were in open-air transport, as in the smell was gone in no time (always think positive, happy thoughts...)

and so we finally pull into vientiene at 9pm! we left hanoi at 7pm the day before. our group splits in half and we ditch the yellers, grab indian food (best I've ever had!), down my first (of many) beer laos (excellent!). then crash into bed.

what an ordeal but thank god for this blog cause once again, I was thinking "this stinks, but I can't wait to write about it".

and this is how I celebrated my 1 year of unemployment anniversary.