Midnight Bus Trip Down the Hume Highway

You'd never see a blog entry with a title like the one above, would you? "Hey everyone, just done this amazing 10 hour trip down this straight 3 lane highway from Sydney to Melbourne. Man it was unforgettable: Trucks, road, more trucks. The scenery was never ending..."

But you should see a blog entry with the title:
Midnight Bus trip to Vieng Xai
We found ourselves stranded in a two bit town where the highlight was the school kids playing some exuberant football; needing to get on a bus at midnight for the 6 hour trip to Vieng Xai -traversing across the mountainous north of Laos. After a quick two hours of sleep our host awoke us so we could rush onto the waiting bus; and so we headed into thick forest... By chance we had a full moon, that bathed us and the landscape in light softened by the heavy silver fog that consumed us. We wound around and up and down, spotting munching bovines and small thatched villages as we headed deeper into Tiger territory. Periodically we would find ourselves cresting mountainous peaks to see the valley below, partially obstructed by a lake of fog that would be our blanket half an hour hence.



So yes it was a beautiful journey, and well worthy of the blog entry. In fact I worked out much of what I would right above early into the trip, where the only distraction was an insipid stench of rotten fish - but it didn't really seem in keeping with the tone of the above description to include that detail there. But the truth is that as the trip continued, my enthusiasm wained. See, I'm not good with night travel as I can't sleep in anything other than a bed. And once we got to about 5 hours into the trip, I was extremely uncomfortable and wanted to get it over with. Quick. So you can imagine how miserable I was by the 10th hour (yes, the Lonely Planet and several information sources in Luang Prabang all underestimated the trip by a mere 4 hours). Perhaps if our water bottle hadn't emptied itself from a leak about 3 hours into the trip I may have been in a better mood? Who knows... suffice to say that I'm not signing up to any more night bus trips - even if it's possible to guarantee that it will be rotton fish free! Luckily we don't need to rush the remaining several thousand kms we have to go...

So how do I conclude this? It's a few days on now, so I can say that the trip was indeed beautiful, but also drained me of all life energy for 30+ hours, and therefore still qualifies as painful, and best avoided again. Perhaps if you find yourself in northern Laos - what would I recommend? The answer is up to you, but if you can sleep - do it! You'll love the moments when you are awake...