It's funny how when you travel 8 hour bus rides seem like nothing. Well, that's how they seem when you book them. "8 hours? Ive been on way longer bus rides than that, I can do it." So Geoff and I bought tickets for the 8 hour express bus ride from Luang Namtha in the north to Luang Prabang a little further south. The bus was really a minivan. In the last two rows Geoff and I crammed in with 4 Dutch tourists. In the first row, the one with the most legroom, sat two tiny Lao women. I tried to sit up front but the ladies kicked me out. I'm not one to play the race card, but there was some obvious racism. I heard the work "falong" (or something) thrown around a bit which is their word for a foreigner.
The road we took, which was the main highway in Laos, had been torn up by a recent cyclone. There really wasn't much road, only gravel and huge potholes. It didn't keep the driver from going 70, though. I would have ended up on the floor had I not been wedged in my seat like those face ice cubes in "Don't Break the Ice."
Anyway, now Im in the beautiful city of Luang Prabang. Tonight I will be in Hanoi, where I hope to meet up with Hoang again.
I think of Che Guivara's quote from his motorcycle diaries: "Yet afterwards I doubted whether driftwood has the right to say, "I win," when the tide throws it on to the beach it seeks." Onto the next beach.
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