A 60 Baht ride from the hotel to the border, a quick stamp on my way out of Thailand, a 20 Baht ride on a crowded bus over the Thai Friendship bridge, a $36 ($1 extra for packing my extra passport pictures so deep in pack that I chose not to retrieve it), a 300 Baht taxi fare and then I was finally almost to the Vientiane bus station to Luang Prabang. In the biggest piece of shit taxi imaginable.

Immediately after crossing the Thai-Laos Friendship bridge, the median between the lanes widens, and criss-crosses at a traffic light. A large sign warns, “In Laos, we drive on the RIGHT.” Admittedly, I had forgot. I suddenly reconsidered my plan of renting a motorbike.

The next major difference I noticed between Thailand and Laos was the goats. Tons of them. Everywhere. So many goats eating grass on the roadside and casually moseying into the street causing the hectic to swerve. The roads bustled with tuk-tuks, taxis, motorbikes and old ladies balancing oddly-shaped whicker containers over their shoulders on bamboo poles. I found the traffic in Vientiane chaotic but when I looked around I noticed I was the only one that was worried. Everyone else driving amidst the dusty traffic was unaffected. Nobody was road raging or so much as complaining; they weren't screeching their breaks or screaming about what I thought were near accidents. Their driving was business as usual.

As fluent as I might imagine myself to be in South East Asia, I managed to land myself in a clunker even by Laos standards, paying double the standard fare. When waiting for the driver to bring the car around I made small talk with a shop owner who gasped as my taxi rattled up to the shop. In Laotian he said: “That is a really ugly taxi, the ugliest taxi in all Vientiane.” You can imagine my excitement. A sucker for punishment, I hopped in and then immediately regretted my decision when we pulled away and I realized the doors were missing handles to roll the windows down. There was certainly no A/C in this taxi.

The gruff driver rolled down his window and somehow reached back and jiggled one of my windows down. It was a dusty sauna of black carpet and leather, with a small current of dusty air flowing through from the outside. 300 Baht was a rip off for the taxi's fare, but I could not have cared less, I just wanted the ride to end quickly.

Instead of staying in Vientiane, I decided to go straight to Luang Prabang. At the Vientane bus station there were several signs advertising VIP buses to Luang Prabang but the few buses parked in the lot were a far cry from having A/C or a bathroom. The ticket counter confirmed my fears and told me the single decent bus in the lot was headed to China and would not be willing to take passengers to Luang Prabang. I bought my cheap ticket for my chicken bus and waited for two hours while they stowed my bag in the back seats of the bus and stacked strange boxes and bags on to the roof.

With a two hour wait and needing to work on my Laos, I started talking to a girl who was waiting to meet her mom. She was from Laos but worked at a coffee shop in Bangkok. She had traveled all the way there by bus to deliver her mom some cash and go back to make some more. When asked how many days they would spend together, she told me they would just meet and then each get on the next bus heading back out.

Other falang eventually rolled up, most with long, funky hair cuts, worn-in clothes, big sunglasses, and colorful but faded jewelry. There was mixed group of European dudes out to conquer the world one city at a time but going to each one and “doing it right.” They often told of the hangovers from the night before like they were injuries of war. They told me American Football was for pussies and that Americans were stubborn for not changing to the metric system.

The roads in Laos that aren't under construction should be. It’s not like the road of hell from Poi Pet to Siem Riep in Cambodia, but the edges of the road were buried in sand and dust and the pot holes were everywhere. The seats on the bus were average and did lean back an inch, but the windows were small sliders that would only open my window so far before pushing the person behind’s window closed. Thus, we had to all be cordial with a bus neighbors and each share the medium flow of air.

Leaving town I saw two monks sitting on a tractor while a man was pouring gas into the tank from a pitcher, a worker hoisting bricks up to the second story of a building one bucketful-at-the-end-of-a-rope at a time, and when we stopped in a small town old ladies would run up to our windows and try to sell us odd strips of grilled beef, guavas, and eggs-on-a-stick. For bathroom breaks we stopped in the middle of the nowhere so everyone could pee in the grass.

Up in the mountains the sun began to disappear and reappear from behind the mountains as we wound our way north. Just as the sun was about to drop for good, we arrived in Vang Vien. Looking at my watch and thinking ahead of another 7 hours on the bus, I wished I was stopping there. But the ticket was paid for I decided to stick with it and ended up being the only falang left on the bus with 7 other people.

The red and orange hues hung in the sky for a while but when it was gone, only the headlights of the bus cut through the darkness. I fell asleep for a while then woke to see fires lighting up the mountains. From a distance the forest fires looked like thin veins of lava oozing down the mountain. As we would wind our way up, then down, or around the mountainside, we eventually passed by them and they were so bright my eyes hurt.

Half way in the pitch black 7 hour journey we stopped for dinner. I had some of that green stuff, some of this brown stuff, all on top of some rice, Korp Jai (thank you). Before getting back on the bus I noticed the bus driver went to fridge and picked himself up the Thai bus driver night cap special: a couple cans of Beer Laos and a couple M 150s. Sap lie duuh.

The rest of the way there, the bus driver drove like we were rushing someone to the hospital. As he swerved left and right, bottles and other garbage rolled from one side of the bus to the other. The overall rattling, shaking, clicking, jerking, high speeds and abrupt stops of the bus ride were similar to those of any roller coaster worth waiting in line for. When it all came to an end I chose to believe that each of the 8 of us on the bus all became friends that day because we were each the survivor of a near death experience. We all waved good bye to each other at the bus station and wished each other good luck in our travels.

We arrived at 2:00 am, only two hours later than the bus driver had told. There were two tuk tuks waiting at the station but only one of the drivers woke up. Four of us shared a ride in the tuk tuk of the awake driver. The others were heading home but I still had to find a guesthouse. Despite the noise coming from the tuk tuk, I could hear how quiet it was at night in Luang Prabang. All shops were closed up, lights were off in homes, and nobody was in the streets. Then we got into town. We drove past the local disco just as the bar has closing and suddenly we were in a sea of motorbikes rushing away like a motocross race. Drunk driving home from the bar, nobody carefully or wore helmets. They were all goofing around, driving along and still talking together before whisking off past our tuk tuk and on to some other party.

With one turn we lost all but a couple of them, and even those sped away quickly and again the town was silent. The driver left me at the door step of a basic guest house. Walking up to the front I saw two people sleeping under a mosquito net in the lobby. I must have made just enough noise to wake them and a man got out from under the net and without words, showed me to a room. With sleepy eyes and no rush, he walked me back to a door, I looked in, took it, and before I could finish asking how much, they guy half-smiled and said, “tomorrow.”