Return to Luang Prabang

The Luang Nam Tha bus station was crowded. We piled onto the bus, along with 40 other people about an hour after it was supposed to originally leave. As we started our journey southward, the passengers that we picked up along the way sat in the aisle on small plastic chairs. There was a guy at the front of the bus that was sick, so every 30 minutes I'd hear him vomiting out the window as the bus cruised up & down the switchbacks. I felt really bad for the guy - a local bus in the middle of Laos has to be a bad place to be sick. All of the bouncing, swerving back & forth, and the sudden breaking must be stomach-wrenching.

An hour into the journey, the bus suddenly started making a really loud exhaust-type of sound. The driver pulled the bus over, and opened the engine to inspect it. He ended up pulling off the head, and finding a snapped rod on the inside of the engine. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but it was sheared in two pieces. Luckily, we had broke down near a place with a welder. After 45 minutes of screwing around with the electricity, the welder was powered up. There was more work put into the reconstruction of the metal rod. It needed to be straight & smooth enough to fit inside the engine, and strong enough to carry us back to Luang Prabang. After a total of two hours, we were back on the road again. As we continued to pick up more people who had to stand in the stairwell at the front of the bus, I wondered if we would stop picking up more passengers. Nope - we picked up anyone who was looking for a ride.

We stopped for lunch in Udomxai around 3:30p, where we had noodle soup and a chance to stretch our legs. We still had about 5 or 6 hours before we would arrive in Luang Prabang. I read The Reindeer People during the remainder of daylight, and then I had to resort to staring out the window once night fell. We finally arrived in Luang Prabang around 9:15, and James and I wandered around trying to find a guest house, which is fairly difficult at that time of time. We settled on an expensive one - $40/night. I tried to find some food, but we had arrived too late and everything was closed. We went out for a drink at Hive, but I wasn't feeling really well so I went back to the guest house.

About an hour later, I was vomiting & had the worst diarrhea of my life. It lasted all night; luckily James had some medication left from his trip to the hospital, so I took it and tried to keep it in my stomach as long as I could. I finally was able to fall asleep around 4am.