Bus rides are fun!!!!

So I went through two significant bus rides recently. Let me tell you about them.

First we headed from Luang Prabang to Phonsovan intending to catch teh Vietiane to Sam Neua bus there and heading on that night (rather than spending money for a night in Phonsovan, which we had decided to skip due to time limits). Phonsovan has some interesting stone jars carved by unknowns and spread all over the place...next time I guess.

This bus ride was cool...guy on the top tying bags while the bus was rolling, bunch of army guard post (four guys in a bamboo lean-to with AK47s beside the road) and all that.

Anyway, so everything went according to plan and we caught the second bus. Resulting in numerous giggles frmo the bus staff. Most falangs (farangs in foreigners in Thai, and falang is Laos) don't catach this bus in the middle of the night I guess. They initially tried to charge us 80000Kip a piece but we had read our bus signs and magically 60000 kip tickets appeared shortly after we made a stink.
QWe were just satisfied to sleep (we were very rude and took the whole back row) again much to our friends' amusement. They sang along to whatever songs were on the radio and had a grand old time, but event they lay down for a rest periodically. Oh and we only took the back row because they told us to and no one wanted to sit near us.
SO as we slept fitfully, at about 4 in teh morning and 15km from our destinatyion the bgus was having issues getting up a hill. Turned out the engine had gone and gotten itself broken. We sat around on the hill while they tried to fix it and when that was never going to happen we sat around on the hill waiting for a vehicle to appear. The roads aren't terribly used at night (or the day for that matter). Eventually people started moving past and a bus was sent from town to pick us up...ended up getting in around 10AM. It was a pretty cool adventure though. The moon was really bright and there was m,ist all in teh mountains, a very nice nioght to get stuck with no lights. It was also fun to see the Laos people and there reaction...some napped, some started a fire to warm up...I'm sure it happens a lot.
I also enjoyed napping and being woken up to "Hey mister wake up" simply because that's what they knew how to say, it wasn't like they said anything to me after that, just giggled.

So then we had another bus trip...I'm actually going to put it seperately. Keep some chronological order.