2 to 3 August - Kunming (China) to Luang Prabang (Laos)

During this journey the clocks went back one hour which made us six hours in advance of the UK. Fuel in Laos was 10,580 kips per litre of petrol (£0.875) and 9,410 kips per litre of diesel (£0.833) with an exchange rate of £1 = 12,000 kips. Driving is on the right hand side in Laos as it was in China.

On the way to the South Bus station to catch the sleeper bus from Kunming to Luang Prabang there was a tremendous amount of new building to be seen mainly for shopping centres, offices, up-market condominiums and flats judging by the hoardings around the construction sites. This was generally so for all the towns and cities in China I have visited on this trip. The sleeper bus left Kunming at 1830 hours, on time, and was quite different to what many of us expected. Simply the normal seating area of the bus had three rows of a top and bottom bunk with a mattress, pillow and duvet, the duvet cover being of a ‘snoopy’ design only it had been spelt ‘snopy’ There was no adjustment of the bed which was raised slightly at the head end but it was comfortable, necessarily so, as I was to spend 26 hours on the bus before it reached Luang Prabang.



Inside the sleeper bus

The sleeper bus

Leaving Kunming, and before it became dark, I noticed that there were miles and miles of poly tunnels, then realised it was not miles but that we were travelling past them for over an hour so there must have been thousands of acres of the tunnels.The only other thing of note was the amount of sweet corn being grown. Once it became dark a Chinese video was played on the screens throughout the bus. It looked to be a variety show of some sort, and parts of it could be more or less understood even without understanding Chinese. The bus would stop every few hours for a toilet stop and for the drivers to change over, there being three drivers on the bus. At 0530 hours we stopped for two hours in a bus station, the last stop before the Chinese Border Post at Mohan. The countryside was very green with rubber trees (I was somewhat surprised to see these) and more vegetables being grown. At 0830 hours we cleared the Chinese customs where they were pleasant and courteous and then it was short ride to the Laos Border Post where the officer on duty must have wished he had stayed in bed when he saw the mass of tourist descend on him for a visa each. He was pleasant enough though and eventually two officials processed our applications for the visas, which cost US$37 each.

The last town before the Chinese border

The Chinese Border Post

The Laos Border Post

Leaving the border and travelling further into Laos it seemed that I was going back in time seeing, not the built-up areas that had been left in China, but the thatched bamboo walled huts of the villages. The smell of the rain forest and wood smoke reminded me of the highlands of Papua New Guinea, sight and smell being almost an exact replica.


Passing countryside

A local village

Passing countryside

A landslide on the road

Village shops



Passing scenery 

The road was nothing but bends, going up and down the sides of valleys and then over the crest into the next valley with lush green trees and undergrowth everywhere that was not cultivated with sweet corn (again) and rice. We arrived at Luang Prabang at 1815 hours local time and were taken to the Spicys Hostel, somewhere we should have kept away from in the first place. Although we had been in a sleeper bus, and we had all slept to some degree during the journey, I think everyone was so tired that evening that all they wanted was some food and then go to bed and did not really LOOK at the hostel. Not that they would have seen much as it seemed that no bulb was above 20 watt and it was a dark, dreary place. I went to the toilet at sunrise only to find that there was no hand basin or any water for washing hand in the two male and two female toilets (I did check the female ones as well) so I washed my hands in the water fountain. Later in the morning our leader was told that eight people were leaving the hostel and going to find their own accommodation as they had and a look round Spicys and were disgusted with what they saw and were not going to stay there any longer. It probably did not help that we were eight to a room as well! The result of this was that we were all moved out of Spicys and into a guest house, Thavisouk GH, a few streets away and a world away in cleanliness and standard to what we had left. Passports and US $50 each was handed over to our illustrious leader for the Vietnam visas.