Main Initiate, Leave Laos

It was time to go..

I know you're thinking, "but you didn't do anything in Laos", but we did, we ate Laab. What I didn't tell you was that our first day there we took a tuk tuk around several parts of the city, and saw everything we needed to!

However, the true Laos experience came when we were leaving. We were picked up in an oversized Tuk Tuk crammed full of people. It was nice. You can't help but bond with someone whose so close that you can smell what type of soap they have been using or the lack there of... Rich, poor or famous, from certain places, there are only certain options available for travel.

Good bye wall stares,  hello adventure.

Leaving Laos, that was the main initiative today, along with entering
Cambodia. After living in the states my whole life where I can travel
freely to "whole new worlds" by driving to a new state, border crossing is new and
plainly just inconvenient, but an adventure I'd like to write about, and 

something I plan to grow more accustom to!!

We have done our travel time you guys. I have stood on buses with 3x
the fire marshals concern...., still no chickens like some friends
of ours experienced. We have done trains with children relieving their
bowels and bladders in the walk ways, while our neighbors chewed
politely on some gizzards.

I don't know what time it was..early morning late at night..but we should have been sleeping.

So, we bought an over night bus! You get a bed to sleep in like an
overnight train. In Laos I didn't mind it. The smells are different
and I don't mind them. I walked on to the bus and headed to my seat.
Curtis was outside making sure our bags were being put away properly.
I noticed the puff paint on the drivers seat..(insert picture) and
started to have memories of passed bus trips. "Please don't have a
toilet"... I spotted a small child..., " please small child.. Have the
ability to sleep through anything"..., I found my bed at the very back
of the bus thanking my lucky flip flops that there was no bathroom and
especially that it was not right by my bed!!! The small children were
far away and I climbed up the latter onto our mat.

To the right of me across the bus were our neighbors, smiles, and
baldies brother? I say this with a question because the bald guy in
front of them looked like his brother, but with less hair... I didn't
ask, so I will never know!!! but I observed them both in question for far too long!

To the left was another sleeper bus. I noticed the identical brand new
crisp and clean looking flower sheets on every bed. I started to
compare the two. Underneath me was a Teddy bear sheet? That looked
like something I had used as a superman cape, then rolled around
endlessly in our neighbors sand box with, and then carried something
like a hundred heavy wet frogs home in, where the frogs where then cooked and
my sheet was hung up over a chair to dry. (insert picture) ok well maybe
not my experience, but someone's.

I noticed a girls hair blowing in the wind, I could feel the cool
Arctic winds of good airconditioning just watching her through my window. I turned back to my own bus and watched the old women in front of us wipe her bangs off her forehead that had been plaster there by sweat.

I started to work on opening the vents. As the imagined arctic winds
began sputtering cool and warm winds from my vents..., I realized how
different out buses were.

Well, like we do, we made the best of it. We went to sleep and I prayed
for safety from the bugs as always.

Curtis Take: Not sure how smooth the ride was in the front of the bus but we were being tossed and bounced all over in the back. Julie kept launching in the air and landing on me while we tried to sleep. I kept wondering if the window would give way and I'd fly out onto the road. We slept on our sides/stomachs to try to keep stable and held a hand in between our faces and the window and wall so we didn't smash faces with all the bumping. Good times. 

Back to Julie.

A few hours into sleeping I
smelled oil. My nose twitched and I turned my head. I started
dreaming oil was dripping on my head so I covered my face up with a
blanket.

Then I felt it in my hair. I uncovered my face and opened my eyes
deciding I would fully wake up so I could fall asleep and dream
something different. That's when I felt the splashes of water on my face
again. The condensation from the aircon! No biggie, a few drops of
water, but those eventually, within minutes turned into a full spring and
then a lake on our bed!

CURTIS Take: The aircon was totally raining on us at this point. I went up front to tell the guys with the bus company what was happening. 

Back to Julie.

It was difficult for him to explain to them as we did not speak their language. These are the jokes that persisted.

"sounds like bake, there is a LLLake on our bed.", Curtis
" it is also like a vegetable, there is a LLeak", smiles

Those are some funny comments I liked from the night putting humor to
the situation where we could not communicate the problem. I forgot to
tell you that there was a half bed in length and width in between
smiles and our bed. It looked like a place to put extra bags, but it
was for the passenger who bought a bed and got jipped. We'll call him
Jimmy. Jimmy's propped up his feet on my bed by my feet and on baldies brothers bed by his feet all
night, until the leak, so his feet didn't hang off his own bed.

Well, they tried to stop the leaks by holding up some plastic bags to
them, like that was going to do anything. We pulled into a small bus stop for a bathroom break and we waited to find out the situation. Suddenly they were working on the engine, the bus would
not work either, and we all slept at that stop that night. 

There are two beds to every seat area. If you buy one a random stranger can buy the other, and you a very close experience with someone you don't know!! I found  a girl named Stephanie who bought one bed. She moved over and we became bunk mates, while Curtis had a camp fire with the
local bus diver men And watched packs of dogs fight and mate and do
what dogs do at night in foreign countries.

It reminds me of apocalyptic movies where few humans come in and out
of rubble and ferocious dogs who survived have become dingoish.

CURTIS Take: I got off the bus at the bus stop and realized that we were either stuck riding in the soaked bed for another 10 hours or we needed to find another option. I quickly started running around, checking all the other buses at the station to see if any were going our way and had room but to no avail. Then I found out we could catch another bus the following evening and just stay the night in a hostel nearby and was walking back to discuss it with Julie when I noticed several guys working on our buses engine. Julie was taken care of in the last dry bed so I stayed up to try and help with the bus and figure out what was happening. After a few hours the bus still wouldn't start. It was the middle of the night, the bus station was empty and I had no idea what the plan was. The bus drivers were huddled around a little fire with the station security guards so I decided to go hang with them and try to find out the plan. After a good gnaw of charades I found out another bus was coming but wouldn't arrive until the morning sometime, several hours later. We sat listening to music, watching packs of dogs attack each other and just taking it easy. It was interesting to watch the slow steady evolution of the bus station from ghost town to sleepy village to bustling travel center in a matter of hours that morning.

Back to Julie.

The night passed pretty quickly and I hear the screaming of a small
child below me. "I know small child, I know!"

The adventure continued and wouldn't be worth writing home about
without the trifecta. But alas the bus with the meat throwing and the broken
seat arrived, which was followed up by our next "VIP" bus going MIA-- due
to another breakdown... So we played sardines in the back of a large
Tuk Tuk again!!!!

Meat bus: A bus arrived after our long night. We all lined up, and waited to enter. A guy came with a trash barrel and someone with in the bus started sweeping out bones and meat. It filled the barrel, and so they brought another. At last we were let in. Did I mentioned we were first in line. We got in to pick a good seat to sleep on. We picked a seat, that we eventually found out was broken, but only after it was too late to pick another. the food I have bought from a local place I realized has a whole chewed through the wrapper by mice or rats. I went to return it, and they did without a second thought, but while I was gone the bus tried to leave with out me! I made it though.

VIP's Gone MIA: A sweet French lady was completely lost after the second bus ride, not knowing where to go or what was happening with the VIP bus that was already an hour late. In broken English asked me for info. I tried to tell her in English but she couldn't understand. All my French
education left me hanging as my mind went blank search through dark cob wedded tunnels, but I continued to search for the words. 

Donde..., no, that is where in spanish!! 

Why am I studying Spanish when I need French!! Why in high-school Did I study French
when I needed Spanish?? Always in the wrong order!!

The Fragmented french was still there. So in broken
french I spoke to her. J'ne said pas!!! She spoke back in frennch

Mrs. Richert..., Mrs. Wozniki..., I understood every word, and answered
back in broken French!! Thank you for forcing me to speak French, to
conjugate, and for passing me. Thank you for endless songs about beef and swimming fish and
other things I always thought were irrelevant!!!  After this conversation and my ability to win little mermaid French trivia questions, I know now that all that singing was not in vain! And you'll be
happy to know.. I know that the little fish are swimming now and not
nauseous.

Petit peasant Nassau Nassau Nassau
 

From then on the french lady and I were friends, and for the next three days I was
having little chats with her in french.

We ferried to the island. Stayed for two days. 

We ate bad food, slept under a mosquito net, and then ate amazing food but at a bug ridden restaurant! U win some u lose some.

(Insert picture)

We left and took a bus to the border and it begins...

The crossing from Laos to Cambodia was an interesting experience.