chiang mai bus station

When I booked the bus to Laos, I did not think too much about it. Sometimes when you plan last minute the perk is you don’t have the time to worry or dread the bad parts. The bus was a 12 hour overnight ride from the north-east part of Thailand to    Udon Thani in the north-west. From there we would take another bus and taxi into the country of Laos.

 

I was not too worried about it since we would be sleeping most of the time. And we also travel with 2 Nintendo DS, 2 Kindle Fires and 1 mini DVD player, so I had high hopes it would be a peaceful ride. And guess what?! It was! It was soo much fun.

soo cool, we got to sit on the top front so we could see everything

We booked the VIP bus so we could have A/C, snacks and fully reclining seats. There were only Thais on the bus, we stuck out! Everyone was very curious about us and very kind and helpful.

We left at 8pm and were supposed to get to Udon Thani at 8 am. Around 3 am I woke up because I was dying of heat, I looked around and we were stopped in the middle of nowhere broken down, so the bus was off and so was the A/C. I am not sure how long we stayed there, I was so tired so I fell back asleep. But when I woke up next it was morning and we were stopped again at a mechanic.

sitting in the shade of the bus

broke down bus

We were broke down for about 5 hours in total. It was pretty hot and we were all spread out in the machanic shop trying to find every inch of shade or a chair to sit in. There was a cute little puppy there that kept the boys entertained and eventually another bus came to get us. They even stopped and got us all lunch so that was really nice.

Conner begged and begged us to buy this puppy-hehe

our new bus pulling up-yeah!!!

inside the bus

We finally got to our destination at 1pm, as soon as we got there the bus for our next stop was pulling out, so that worked out perfect.

snack time between bus and taxi

at the Thai/Laos border

We headed to the border and made it across without incident. The nice man who worked the money exchange booth even stayed open late to help us get the correct money to buy our visas. I must say I was quite unorganized for this part of our journey. I really don’t now what I was thinking, I did tons of research about what buses and taxis to take and how much it would all cost, but when it all happened I forgot everything!  hehe oh well, we are in Laos!

super hot and sweaty and dirty after our 24 hours of travel! but very happy-thanks Conner for taking this awesome picture

our 1st sunset in Laos