Luang Namtha

So happy to be back in Laos, where the hills are green and beautiful and the girls wear long skirts.

It took me a long time to get to the bus station at Houixei this morning, and by the time I arrived the nine o'clock bus for Luang namtha had left. They sold me a ticket anyway and put my bag on the back seat of the bus. Gradually during the course of the morning people drifted in to the bus station and sat watching a TV soap. There were only two buses in the bus station, which was surrounded by a field. On one side of the field a few tables and chairs under some trees indicated a cafe of sorts. A woman was making green papaya salad, so I had some. A group of Lao men were drinking beer. And so the morning passed, reading, wandering about, sitting. Then at midday the bus filled up and left.

A few miles out of Houixei the road surface gave up altogether. For the next two hours the bus rattled and ground up bendy mountain roads in a cloud of dust. The one hundred and eighty kilometre trip took four hours, four hours of green hillsides, thatched roof houses on stilts, slash and burn agriculture, rice fields and the bus driver singing along to the Lao pop music CDs he played at top volume