The bus wound its way through grand hillsides before climbing through the most amazing scenery I have ever seen. The mountains were sheer and jagged and covered in dense foliage. Staring out the bus window it took my breath away. I couldn't believe that I was actually looking at that place where all adventures start, the jungle!
This was of course our first taste of a Laos bus journey and that too was certainly an adventure. The bus was absolutely rammed, Westerners, locals, children and chickens, no one is left behind even if the bus is full. They have fold down seats in the aisle so once everyone's in you're trapped until the toilet break. Ah the toilet break. This is a free for all where everyone oiles off the bus at once and tried to wee in the same few metres of grass at the edge of the road. There's no point looking for somewhere to hide, on one side there is a sheer drop towards the valley floor and on the other a sheer cliff. One thing I would highly recommend (and fortunately this didn't happen to us) is going at the same time as everyone else because at least then (Lao's are fairly modest people) men and women go in different directions. If you stop the bus specifically for you, which the affable drivers are more than happy to do as no one in Laos is ever in a hurry, then everyone else on the bus will stand up to watch.
Luang Namtha is made up of a string of villages which over time slowly joined together to form a single town. Although to be honest there is still an obvious gap between the settlements and the place looks more like a few separate attempts at a town dotted along a straight road rather than an actual cohesive place.
The tourist part with the guesthouses and restaurants is a fairly unremarkable place. The only events of note on our first night there were trying Mekong catfish, which was not as delicious as I had hoped, and the appearance of a spider so huge in the restaurant (and I know many of my friends and family back home will sympathise with this) that I had to go back to the room and cry for a full ten minutes to regain my composure.
The opportunity of doing much else in Luang Namtha was taken from us by the arrival of the monsoon. In the middle of the night the storm struck and the heavens opened. The rain battered down all night and we were caught by a few more showers while we were there. This not only made everything ridiculously muddy but also cut off the power. Time to move swiftly on.
My blog has moved! Check out more on Southeast Asia and India on emmajpocklington.wordpress.com
No comments:
Post a Comment