the epic bus jourrney (33 hours)

We got on the bus in siem reap at midnight, with tickets that said we'd be in vientiane by the next evening. On the way to the bus we met two girls who told us their friend had done the same trip in reverse and said it was the most frightening experience of his life, and he had thought the bus was going to drive off a cliff every 2 minutes. Absolutely crapping our pants, we got on what was meant to be a sleeper bus that turned out to be seats. This didn't matter anyway because the trip was so terrifying we didn't sleep a wink. Although we didn't see any cliffs,both of us sat bolt upright and wide eyed for the whole 4 hour trip, as we careered around corners and sped like crazy into the dark. Three days earlier, the same journey in reverse had taken 6 hours. Back in phnom penh we were dropped at some random bus station where they were blaring hip hop shit music at 5am. We were so happy to get on the next bus, even though that wasn't a sleeper either. It was ok though because we had two seats each, and passed the time experimenting with different ways to sleep without falling into the aisle at every corner. We stopped for lunch at another random roadside place and the lady sitting opposite me on the bus bought a giant fried tarantula. Back on the bus, I watched in horror as she crunched her way through the legs so painfully slowly and then started pulling apart the abdomen. I was in shock, it was so repulsive. We got to the laos border which was just a little shack with a flag on it where we had to pay to get our passports stamped for some corrupt reason or another. When we got to pakse though, we got on the coolest bus ever. Walking up the aisle, we got to our seats which were actually just a double bed, two pillows and some blankets. Not the safest ride but definitely the most fun! We befriended this gorgeous cambodian couple opposite us-the only other foreigners on the bus, who shared their fruit and dinner with us, and laughed at the whole 'bird foetus' episode that I talked about before. As we arrived in vientiane, we piled into a tuk tuk with everyone else and sped off into town. One of the most memorable experiences of our trip will be driving around the capital that morning to the tunes of 'funky town' and 'kung fu fighting' that blared from the boom box at the front of the truck. What can you do except laugh!