March 2010: Vientiane to Luang Prabang, Lao

Thanaleng being the only train station in Lao for now, the only possible way overland to China would be the bus. The Vientiane-Kunming bus is rumoured to be no longer running. And even if it was, I can't really imagine being stuck on a bus all the way from Vientianne to Kunming. So, the trip has to be broken up.

However, in the morning at the Vientiane station, there were ample sign that there Vientiane-Kunming bus is running, possibly for the Chinese New Year season.
The buses ready to roll.
The bus left the staion, picked up some more passengers on the outskirt of Vientiane. And very soon, it is off the flat road.
The last of flat farm land, as the mountains in the distant beckons.
What follows before the bus pulls into Luang Prabang station are winding narrow mountain roads that zig-zag up and down slopes. You would be thankful that the Laotian drivers were pretty safety-cautious ones. There wasn't much honking and overtaking by the bus, and each sharp turns were made gingerly.

As the driver does his job, while the time away looking out the window at the mountain landscape, which reminds me of black-and-white picture of the Burma-Yunnan road built by the Chinese army and volunteers during the Sino-Japan war.
Alternaively, check out the image of domestic lives of the mountain tribes. Every once in a while the bus passes a village, which usually consists of ten or so houses. The houses could be built with attap, wood, zinc roof or concrete and bricks; but every one of them have their front clinging to a narrow strip by the sealed road, with two stilts at the back of the house extending down the slope. Occasionally, you see concrete water tanks built/donated by World Vision Australia (the painting on the side says so) Here, the domestic lives of the villagers (Hmong I supposed) play out right outside your bus windows: toddlers playing with their companion puppies in the dirt; group of older kids walking home after their day's work of picking fire woods (their picking in bags, with the strip of the bags hanging from their forehead); ladies wrapped in flimsy 'sarongs' taking a shower behind bamboo screens on their front porch. Occassionally, the driver has to honk at villages hiking home or pulling carts.