workin'

Every weekend, I take a bus from my little suburb to Sasang station in Busan. For the last couple of weeks, the Busan bus station has been under construction.

how can I leave this behind?

After surviving 48 hours without a camera, I was eager to document everything. The day after I replaced my camera, I took the bus to Ban Phe again. I cherished the sights on the bus from Krabi because I knew I wouldn't be able to look back at pictures. The trip to Ban Phe was less picturesque, but the bus was luxurious.



And I did snap this:



Heh heh.

all i got is a photograph

This is what happens when I don't have a camera.

I took a bus to Surat Thani to catch the night train to Bangkok. The bus passed some truly beautiful scenery, which I yearned to capture but my camera is swimming with the fishes, figuratively, after swimming with the fishes, literally.

So I tried my hand at describing the scenery, and this is what I wrote in my little notebook (otherwise filled with to-do lists and guesthouse names.)

I couldn't take a picture of the palm tree orchards at twilight, casting perfect linear shadows on the pale green earth. They might continue forever, except when the road and the rolling of the hills meet with a subtle valley and the end of the orchard is visible.

Great fists of limestone, jutting into the orange sky! What impassioned you to stab mightily through the crust of hell, all angry knuckles and thumbs, and then to be still? To allow life, lush and dark, to creep over your hands and settle in the great crevices between your fingers? To allow to grow in the shadow of your fists a petty coconut field?

And this is what you'd have to deal with if I didn't replace my camera right away, which I did. You missed a couple of poetic scenes, actually. I highly recommend the road between Krabi and Surat Thani at sunset.

When I got to Bangkok, I went to MBK and bought myself a new camera, and took this picture on the way back. And hey I just noticed that I'm in one of the mirrors!



A thousand words, right there.

P.S. Tuk-tuk are funner than taxis.

Giddyup or whoa

After confirming that I'm well enough to hula-hoop, I left Ban Phe. Incidentally, I have things to write about.

First, the southern bus terminal in Bangkok is amazing! It's three floors of shopping, little karaoke rooms, and at least two Mister Donuts, of whose "Pon de Ring" my Dunkin' Donuts mochi ring is a pale imitation.

I bought one.



It was fantastic. And I don't like the frosted mochi rings, because they're really sweet, but this was the best donut I've ever had in my life. In a bus station. In Bangkok.

And because I'm classist, and don't like sleeping next to "aisle people," and also like reclining seats, I bought a ticket on the 24-seat VIP bus to Krabi, on the Andaman sea in southern Thailand. Only three seats across, and I didn't have to miss the World Cup game (I don't even know who was playing.)



And after a night on the most deluxe of deluxe buses in Thailand, I think I'm going to schedule my overnight travel on trains whenever possible. I just can't sleep in a recliner, as plush as it was. The service was excellent though, so I can recommend VIP for day travel. I got a pastry in a keepsake gift box!



And vegetable juice, and shrimp-flavored peanuts, AND water. And I woke up too early in the morning in Krabi and took a long-tail boat to Railay.

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore

After two whole days on boats, I looked forward to some overland travel (no I didn't! I looked forward to someplace pretty where I could stay for a few days and *not* be on a bus or a boat or a train or any other seat for hours at a time.) I had to get to Thailand, either way.

The ferry from Huaey Sai, Laos to Chiang Khong, Thailand takes maybe five minutes. It just crosses the Mekong.



Thai immigration guy: why did you put my entry stamp on the right side of a brand new page halfway through my passport? It would have looked so clean if you had put it below my Lao entry stamp.

When I arrived in Chiang Khong, I took a tuk-tuk to the bus station to catch a bus to Chiang Rai.

THIS:


This is the beautiful, shiny, majestic public bus from Chiang Khong to Chiang Rai. It's near the most beautiful bus I've ever seen, I'd say.

I listened to some Elton John on the bus. "Your Song" reminded me of karaoke with Alan, and "I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues" is kind of my favorite karaoke song (even though I've only sung it twice,) stolen from Annie.

But then.

"Tiny Dancer." It was perfect.

This could have happened,


but didn't.

It's my birthday, too!

(It's not my birthday anymore; that was on the 15th. But I had a lot of blog posts scheduled in the meantime.)

If they exist, the travel fairies gave me a birthday present they knew I would appreciate (and I'm not being facetious.)

I had breakfast in Phonsavan with three Danish girls that I met at the Plain of Jars. They asked where I was going next, and I said "I'm taking a minibus Luang Prabang at 8:30" and they shared that they were leaving for Luang Prabang on a minibus at 8:30 too! What a silly assumption it would be if you thought we'd all be on the SAME minibus at 8:30 (I'm sure theirs was less of an adventure.)

After checking out from our guesthouse, we ventured to the travel place. The fella there said that the three Danish girls would go on one bus, but I would go with that guy over there. So I went with that guy. I briefly feared that I might be making this 8 hour journey in a songthaew, but his songthaew just took me down the street to the bus station.

I got in the minibus as instructed and waited. A nice lady came by and said, "you are the only one on this bus going to Luang Prabang, so they will take you half way and then you will get on another minibus and this bus will go to Vang Vieng." This will be an adventure!

I settled down with my book and waited. There was a little boy running in between the minibuses (I had the door open, since it was hot) and generally being a little boy and thus causing me irritation, but soon, soon I would be off!

The driver got into the bus, and made it a family outing as his wife, daughter, and the little boy got on too!

Mama is really nice, but she turned on Lao music really loud and would frequently burst into sing-along with it throughout the ride. Unfortunately, loud Lao music was disruptive for my attempts to read. Little girl was inoffensive except that twice on the windy road she had to vomit into a plastic bag and then throw it out the window. Little boy was my mortal enemy. He kept...moving and making noises and touching things. And I gave him dirty looks. We had fun.

Well we wound along mountain roads for a bit until Mama noticed that there was a bamboo shack by the side of the road with a woman selling... what I can only assume was firewood impregnated with fragrant resin? It looked like bacon. But she's a very discriminating buyer and purchased a bundle only after some conversation. There were four stands all visible from the first stand, about 100m apart. And they stopped at all of them. They only purchased from the first.

We drove some more, and Mama burst out in song and Little Boy threw random pieces of garbage out the window and Little Girl was quiet when she wasn't puking.

And four hours later we came to a crossroads. It was kind of an Old West town with a guesthouse and a market and a man in a uniform directing the traffic of buses and minibuses as they came from the three streets (I guess that means it's not a crossroads, really, it's a roundabout with three legs. Or something.) We all got out of the bus. Papa went and sat in the roundabout, and Mama said she was going to go find out which bus I needed.

I waited. I bought some banana fritters. They were soggy.

Mama came back and conferred with Papa and Papa got in the minibus and drove away, while Mama and I waited in the roundabout and she asked each passing bus if they were going to Luang Prabang. After a number of no's, she gave up and went and bought some long beans. Then she came back, and I got my bus! And my bus, the first bus passing through Podunk, Laos for Luang Prabang, was a super awesome VIP bus with more leg room than I've ever had in my LIFE and so few people that I got TWO SEATS. Where was this bus on that 16-hour trip from Rayong to Nong Khai?

I took this picture of my old mini-bus, from the plush seat of my new VIP bus. The lady in red appears to be buying soggy banana fritters.



I sat on my awesome new bus, and the music was quiet enough that I could drown it out with Donovan on my ipod (Wear Your Love Like Heaven!) and four hours later, I was at the Luang Prabang bus station!

over the hills where the spirits fly

It takes 7 hours to reach Phonsavan from Vang Vieng, and the minibus traveled past the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen. I felt like I should be in Middle Earth (after eschewing The Hobbit in favor of something a little more embarrassing for my minibus reading material, even!)







The landscape changed from these glorious karst mountains to rounder, softer hills and then suddenly there were pine trees! And it smelled like cattle and pine and I could have been anywhere, if not for the occasional banana tree and valley full of rice.



And then it was just soft, rolling hills, and I saw a larger-than-I-expected flat city of shop houses, and I hoped that it wasn't Phonsavan, but it was. The end of the line, for now.

Rocket, man!

On Sunday I hopped on a bus to Vang Vieng.



I found myself saying, "It's only a three hour bus trip! That's nothing!" And it was. Where Ryan and I were the only falang on the cramped trip from Rayong to Nong Khai, this bus was all falang. And it actually smelled like dirty hippie. Very unpleasant. I checked into a guesthouse, and a loud shot went off across the street while the receptionist was handing me my key. We both jumped. I had arrived in Vang Vieng on Rocket Day!

I found my room and took a shower for some reason (showers in Laos are not effective unless administered just before sprawling naked under a fan and not moving for the rest of the day) and then ventured down to the base of most of the vapor trails.

I crossed this rickety bridge.



And ventured through the festival to the river.


Yeah, that's a rocket on the van.

Present Emily is very grateful to Past Emily for the purse umbrella, by the way.





The river was nice and cool, and surrounded by gumdrop mountains. I stood about knee deep, holding my rainbow polka-dot umbrella and eating an ice cream cone. Random people drifted under my umbrella's shade and thanked me for it. And there were rockets.



They're supposed to make it rain, and they worked.

the bus that takes me to you

On Tuesday afternoon, Ryan and I left Ban Phe for Laos in a hurry after depositing our final paychecks. We lugged much of Annie's stuff onto a songthaew in Ban Phe, which took us to Rayong where we found the bus station. As we approached the bus station, there was one bus getting ready to leave. It had seats available but no toilet. The other option was to wait until tomorrow. Of course we got on the bus!

The trip to Nong Khai is about 16 hours overnight. I can't complain that my seat didn't recline and I dozed for maybe two hours on the whole trip, because at the fourth or fifth stop (well after dark,) the center aisle of the bus filled with small plastic stools. The unlucky folks who boarded at later stops had to squat on stools all night. I cherished my upright vinyl seat.

In the morning, we arrived at Nong Khai at about 10:00 am and took a tuk-tuk to the border. Here are Ryan and I, unwashed and under-slept on our way to immigration.





The border was painless. It was much quicker than my only other Southeast Asian land crossing into Cambodia. There were no sneaky touts trying to sell us visas, just a woman with a big basket of delicious fried beignet-things greeting us on the Laos side.

Shortly thereafter, Annie!



Annie is so happy and colorful here. I can see why she loves Vientiane.