Sleeping bus to Pakse

From Vang Vieng, we booked our bus to Pakse, which is in the south of Laos. We had a regular bus as far as Vientiane, and then a sleeping bus for the overnight stretch to Pakse. We got onto our bus in Vang Vieng and waited and waited. After about 10 minutes, people started filtering off the bus as it was just too hot without air conditioning. Eventually they announced that our bus was broken (what a shock) and we would have to wait for another bus. The good news is that the new bus was far nicer than the old and the air conditioning worked just fine. However, the delay put us in jeopardy of making our connecting bus in Vientiane.
We arrived in Vientiane with little time to spare to make the jaunt to a different bus station. The 6 of us who were booked on the Pakse bus piled into a tuk-tuk and figured we had just enough time to make our bus. We didn't get very far before we were transferred to a larger tuk-tuk. We thought life was grand as we were 6 in a tuk-tuk that could really seat 10. What fools we were. By the time we got to the correct bus station, we had passed the same corner 4 times and picked up another 21 people!! Man was it crowded. But, we all made it to the bus station, and since we constituted 80% of the passenger list, they had held the bus for us.


This photo is taken from our "bed" on the second level of the bus, looking out through the front window. It was actually very comfortable. The fellow in the front is a Swede who kept us all entertained all the way from Vang Vieng to Pakse.

Come morning time, Campbell and Dean were bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready for the day ahead.