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It was my great idea to suck it up, save money and take an overnight bus from Luang Prabang to Vientian instead of fly. Though the seats reclined on this bus, they were nothing like our first-class seats in the Argentine buses that allowed for pleasant sleeping. Not to mention that we were constantly thrown from side to side as we wheeled around hairpin turns. I’m not usually afraid of heights, but Steve and I agreed that it was probably a good thing that darkness shrouded our view. I must have gotten a wink of sleep though because I was dreaming, and in my dream there was this ridiculously loud rattling noise. I woke up and realized that the rattling sound was the bus, and I was sure the walls would fall off at any moment.
At midnight, when I was about to fall asleep, we made a pit stop. All of the lights came on and everyone shuffled off of the bus. Again at 3am, just when I had gotten comfortable and fallen asleep, the bus stopped, lights came on, and everyone got off. I assumed it was another pit stop since we still had 3 and a half hours to go, so I stayed on the bus and went back to sleep. Luckily, a Danish girl came and told us that we had arrived at our destination! 3 hours early! Fabulous–maybe I could get some sleep.
Wishful thinking. As in the rest of Asia, everything shuts down at 11pm. We wandered around with the Danish couple and woke up several hotel workers to find out that basically the whole town was booked. We eventually found one room, but they wanted $30 until 11am at which point we would have to check out. $30 for 7 hours was too much for any of us, so we found a table and played cards until the town started to wake up. By this point we were starving since we had not eaten dinner the night before, so when we found a breakfast place, we ordered a ridiculous amount of food, and it was so yummy! While we were hanging out enjoying food coma, a couple walked out of the hotel attached to the cafe, and we were able to get their room! Perfect! Finally, some sleep!
Vientiane turned out to be a very relaxing capital city that we liked a lot. We spent the day at Buddha park that not only had statues of Buddha but also Hindu gods. One sculpture was so big that you could go through an entrance in the shape of a mouth, climb 3 stories inside and end up on the top overlooking the park. Very cool. It was an expensive and bumpy ride getting there, but I recommend it!