Bus travel

The_Traveler

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This will give you an idea of local bus travel in the less developed parts of SE Asia.
There are VIP buses that travel long routes (8-20 hours), they are not supposed to stop between towns to pickup passengers. This was a local bus (4 hours total), once the seats are full, the aisles get filled, the steps get filled, no problem. The bus is full when there are no more passengers wanting to go.
Big parcels go on top, everything else under the seat or on one's lap. Chickens and ducks are in cages or tied up.
For some reason, Lao people are prone to motion sickness and it is routine to hear a yakking sound and see someone vomiting quietly into a plastic bag which they then toss out the window.

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This counts as a paved road; a thin skin of gravel, spread by hand and with a layer of tar dribbled over it from a bucket with holes. Usually a hand pulled roller or occasionally an actual steam roller will make a pass over it. Big trucks chew up this layer in no time.

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There aren't any real rules of the road. The white line is to mark the middle for those who drive at night. Often scooters and motorbikes will drive without lights because it is believed that saves gas.

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And if you do have an intermediate stop, there are always Akha women (I think these are Akha) who try to sell trinkets (or weed). My friend is 6 feet so you can see how tiny these women are.
They walk down to this bus stop from hill villages.
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The bus stops have toilets for the fastidious travelers.

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One thing that always amazes me is that, out in what I think is the middle of no-where, there will be someone walking.
No houses in sight, let alone villages.
Lots of small villages have just tiny dirt roads leading to them. What we would think of as a path is the entrance to a small cluster of houses.
 
Thanks for the pics and story of a place I'll probably never see for myself. great stuff.
 
are you allowed to smoke the weed the women are selling?
or is it strictly "under the radar"?
 
Thanks for the pics indeed. I don't think I'll ever get the chance to visit.
 
are you allowed to smoke the weed the women are selling?
or is it strictly "under the radar"?

It is difficult to explain just how invisible the hand of the government is here - and what is allowable.
What is clearly against the law is a foreigner having sex with a Lao.
Perhaps that is just the puritanism of Communism but there certainly wasn't the obvious prostitution that there is in other countries.
In three weeks I never saw a policeman until I got to Luang Prabang, the largest tourist draw in Laos.
There are long involved signs everywhere in rather difficult to understand English. (Facility in English is not important even in the tourist officials I met. I am not a cultural imperialist, the only non-Lao language they seemed to be facile in is French -and it seems that it is the older people who speak that.)

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We traveled through the fringes of the Golden Triangle and visited the town that was once the center of drug trade.


Weed was freely available from the Akha people who roamed the tourist haunts and it seemed that smoking it was not a big deal. It was the odd cafe or bus that didn't have the well known aroma. I didn't see opium being smoked but my guide pointed out some Akha villagers with, what he said, were the signs of opium smoking when we were in the highest hill villages.

From what I can see, use is ignored by the invisible police but trafficking is wrong - at least on paper.
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Note that they acknowledge the existence of the non-official name.

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