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April 1, 2007
The Road to Laos - A Sad Journey
We set of from Hanoi at about 6pm on Friday to get he bus to Laos. The bus should have taken about 13 hours, or so the woman in the shop told us when we booked the tickets.
To start with things were not going too well. Most buses in Asia are not so good and this was no exception. The bus had been loaded with bag of rice, tins and some large green packets of some thing they did not want us to look at. In between the bags the passengers had to squeeze in.
The bus was very full there where even people siting on the floor, after about 2 hours on the bus and 5-6 stops we pulled up at some layby to pick up more people and more rice. There was no more room in the bus for the rice so the driver started picking up our bags and putting then on the roof. I had put up with no room and the bags of rice everywhere but I was not about to let them lose my bag off the roof. After a bit of a stand off with some we come to a understanding that the bag would stay in the bus not on the roof.
The jorrney to the Vietnam Laos border was pretty straight forward and it took about 10 hours.
Once at the border we sorted out our visas and set off again to head of to Vientien (Laos).
This should have been another 10 hour journey - but things went very wrong.
The road from the border in to Laos is windy and steep and at one point we had to get off so the bus could get up a hill. At About 5-6 hours from Vientien (Laos) the bus headed down a particularly steep bend in the road all of a sudden there was a really big bang and no one had a clue what was wrong. I knew we had crashed but was not sure to what extent. I ran down the bus and to the front of the bus where there where two young girls laying in the middle if the road with there moped laying on top of one. At this point I think I went into autopilot.
I headed to the first girl and there was nothing I could do - it was too late. I checked for signs of life but nothing so I went to the second girl. She was in a bad way. I tried to help her but she died afer a few minutes.
Then there were people all around. We weren't to sure what to do so far from anywhere. After a few mimtes some one came to mark the road and move the girls' bodies.
In the meantime the bus driver had jumped onto a moped and left the scene.
One by one the bus crew disappeared and left us on the side of the road. I tried to find out what was happening but they seemed more bothered about one of the bags of rice that had split in the crash. I managed to flag down a parcel van that was going past and said we would pay him to take us to the nearest town. I'm so glad I had my GPS with me it gave us a clue to where we were and how far it was to the next place. I think that GPS paid for itself today.
The van driver took us to the nearest town, which was about 1 hour away and then he said he would take us to Vientien (Laos) which was really good of him. The drive took about 2-3 hours to the capital where we paid hime and gave hime a pretty big tip for helping us out.
Posted by admins at April 1, 2007 8:15 AM