Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Day 57 - The WORST Bus Ride Ever

The bus wasn't so bad, and the A/C was working quite well...but I think Laos buses are notorious for being very cramped... They call these buses “VIP” buses, but they are really just a step up from the regular buses. There is very little leg space and the seats are pretty narrow. I couldn't imagine what a tall European must feel when he rides this type of bus...

Anyways, it didn't rain too much, but the roads were very underdeveloped, so I had the same problem Agoes did...The bus felt like it was going to tip over evertime it tried to go through some of the potholes in the dirt roads. We also stopped about 20 times throughout the night to grab food, fix the bus, or just stop for pee breaks. Some of the time, we were riding the bus going 5 mph probably for safety reasons when we were going uphill or through the darkness. It was almost impossible to sleep through most of the night...and this was supposed to be a 12 hour bus ride...It ended up being 16 hours...............

Experiencing this makes me worried about my travels to Burma. I think the roads are going to be even less developed....so the rides will be even worse... We'll just have to see when I go in August.

When we arrived at Huay Xi, we took tuk tuks to Lao Immigration, before taking boats to the other side of the river to Thai Customs. Afterwards, we had to take another public bus to Chiang Rai, which would be another 2 hours...I dreaded this because the buses looked worse than the VIP buses...but the ride was actually nice, thanks to the roads being very smooth and the open windows that provided a nice breeze.

The city is pretty small, and there isn't much that I see in the guidebook that really interests me, so I decided that I would book a ticket out of this town and into Chiang Mai early the next morning. I checked out the food market to grab dinner and saw some bugs on sale...I asked if I could try the cricket, and tasted it...but wouldn't even think of buying a plate FULL of them to eat...

Tuk-Tuk Ride in Huay Xi

Bus Ride to Chiang Rai

Dinner at the Street Market in Chiang Rai

Insects for Dinner

1 comment:

  1. holy crap those bugs are huge, especially the ones on the left! Glad to see your doing well Philip :]

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