After our hiking adventures around Sa Pa, the next four days were dominated by transit as we made our way first by bus and then by boat across the border from Vietnam into Laos and then down the Nam Ou river to Louang Phabang. While we knew we were taking a slightly unconventional route in crossing the border, we didn’t realize quite how adventurous the trip would turn out to be…
We woke up in Sa Pa on Thursday, July 15th and assumed our day would be pretty chill–an 8 hour bus ride from Sa Pa to Dien Bien Phu. I was a little curious to see Dien Bien Phu, knowing only that it was famous for the battle that lead to the end of French occupation of Vietnam, but I also knew we would be arriving in the afternoon and leaving early the next morning, so I didn’t have high hopes for seeing much. On top of that, an hour of my time was already spoken for as I had arranged to have a job interview (for a teaching position back home) that evening over Skype from an internet cafe.
Anyhow, after a quick shower in the morning, Jessica and I asked for directions to where we could catch the bus to Dien Bien Phu. Our hotel suggested we get a ride there, so we agreed. Instead of a cab, they called two guys with motorcycles and Jessica and I had a ridiculously short, but slightly terrifying ride down the hill to the bus stop. It wasn’t at a station, just a stretch of curb, so I’m glad we got reliable directions, but we could easily have walked there. I don’t think the hotel owners knew how light we packed. More importantly, one of my greatest travel photography regrets comes from this moment: I failed to get a photo of Jessica clinging in terror to the motorcycle driver while also not trying to get too touchy with someone she didn’t know. Alas, I was doing the same thing, so no way to photograph the moment!
The “bus” was pretty small, with room for about 30 people, not a full sized long distance bus. The ride was about as expected…slow. It’s only about 160 miles by road, so that means about 20mph as an average speed. Dirt roads up and down jungle-covered mountains will do that. And it was generally a pretty ride, if a bit bumpy. We were also promised that the bus had air conditioning. It most definitely did not.
There were two other foreign tourists onboard with us, a couple of college students from Finland. Otherwise the bus largely served local folks going from one town to another. Some were on it for the long haul with us, others just for short segments. And, yes, there were chickens (baby ones!) on the bus for a bit.
Everything seemed to go reasonably smoothly (despite the bumpy road) for about 4 hours…and then the bus broke down. When it became obvious that we were not moving for a while, everyone got off the bus and sought shade by the side of the road while the driver and his assistant fiddled around under the hood. A couple of hours later, we were on our way again. I figured I was still OK. My interview wasn’t scheduled until 9:00pm (which is, I believe, 10:00am in North Carolina).
Another shorter break down and a brief stop to allow a minor mudslide to be cleared from the road took up another hour or two and I started to worry a bit, but it still seemed probable we’d make it with a good amount of time left. I might have to skip dinner if there was a rush, but we had lots of snacks, so I’d survive.
It was the third breakdown that killed my chances of making the appointment. It was about 6:00pm by then and the bus had slowed to a crawl. We were probably only about 20 miles from Dien Bien Phu, but given the heat, the mosquitoes, our lack of familiarity with the area, and lack of ability to speak the language, we decided that sticking with the bus was still our best bet. A few of the Vietnamese folks on the bus wandered off to walk to their destinations, but most stuck around, hoping that the repairs wouldn’t take too long.
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/P1040468.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1)
We took this as an opportunity to connect and spent some time using the little translation dictionary in the back of our guidebook to “chat” with a couple of the women on the bus. I would point at a series of words (“bus” “broken”) and they would flip through the book and point at a few of their own (“long” “time”) and so forth. We laughed trying to pronounce each other’s languages.
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/P1040473.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1)
That woman also was quite helpful, helping me wash my pants in a little roadside waterfall after I sunk knee deep in mud while wandering about.
Eventually, as the clock ticked forward, I approached Jenny and Katareena to ask about their cell phone. They had one with them for emergencies. I swore up and down that I’d find a way to pay them back and they eventually handed over their phone so that I could do my job interview from the side of a muddy road in the middle of nowhere Vietnam. The sun was setting and the mosquitoes were out in full force. After a crazy day, I was a bit distracted.
Short story: I didn’t get the job.
Irony: It was an interview for a job at an International Baccalaureate school for a position teaching World History. I thought my current experience seemed right up their alley!
Long story: Months later, when we were all back home, I got in touch with Jenny and she looked up her cell phone bill. I eventually sent her a $200 check, as that’s what 60 minutes of international calling ended up costing. For a job I didn’t even get. Bleh.
Back to the main story: The bus eventually got moving again and we pulled into Dien Bien Phu around 2:00am. Yay.
Jenny and Katareena were planning to catch the same 5:30am bus into Laos as Jessica and I were the next morning, so the four of us decided to stick together. We wandered across the street to an all night restaurant and ordered a series of cold drinks to get through the night. At 4:00am we had one last bowl of pho, a symbolic end to our time in Vietnam.
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/P1040475.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1)
Day two of the bus journey made day one seem pretty tame.
At daybreak, we gathered with a crowd of about a dozen foreign tourists and a similar number of Vietnamese and Lao folks around and were herded onto a tiny bus with seating for exactly 22 people (counting the driver). It was tight, but we made it work with a couple of people in the aisles and kids on laps. The driver’s assistant was very forceful about taking everyone’s luggage and putting it on top of the bus. He wouldn’t let us keep anything that didn’t fit on our laps with us. It seemed a little unnecessary, but he was very insistent, so we went along with it.
It turns out, he knew what he was talking about. As the bus continued on towards the Lao border, we picked up a handful more passengers and the crowding grew. And then, once we were through the border station and heading down the road into Laos, more and more people got on. Eventually there were 39 people on the bus.
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1040476.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1)
Jessica and I were hot and uncomfortable, with her spending some time sitting on my lap and occasionally just a bunch of us sitting hip to hip squished together. But we were surviving and laughing about the discomfort. Some of the other tourists (a group of 7 from New Zealand, in particular — I bet you can identify who was the ring leader from the photo above) were less chill about the whole situation and complained and argued with the driver and his assistant several times. This is how tourists get a bad name. Ugh.
Things got a bit worse when the bus ended up sinking into the mud and leaning dangerously over the drop off on the cliff side of the road. At that point the bus driver and assistant got very insistent that we stay on the bus! This may seem counter-intuitive, but they basically said that if we got off, with all the luggage on top, the bus wouldn’t be balanced and would roll off the hill. So, the instructions were basically to stay on board and hope the bus didn’t tip or slide off over the cliff while we awaited a solution.
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1040478.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1)
Of course, the obnoxious kids from NZ didn’t take kindly to that. The asshole who was their de facto leader (loudest one in the group) got off to take photos. Everyone yelled at him, but he said he didn’t care because he was safe either way (since he’d be off the bus if it tipped over). While stuck aboard, we learned from the rest of the group that they had been traveling in Vietnam mostly while doing a ton of morphine and were heading across Laos to Thailand to check out the drug/rave beach scene. Not our people. They also shared a lovely story of getting in a bar fight with locals in Ha Long Bay and kicking a dog. Bleh. At this point we were hoping we survived, but feeling like our companions might be cursing our karmic chances.
Eventually, the people doing the road construction about a mile down the road got wind of our situation, brought a tractor over, and towed us away from the edge of the cliff. Yay!
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1040479.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1)
Of course, an hour or two further down the road, the bus was stopped by further road construction. We weren’t leaning dangerously, so they let us disembark and the whole crowd ended up hanging out in the yard of a random Lao family for about 3 hours. I will give the NZ ringleader credit for one hilarious moment here — he borrowed the family’s motorcycle and went about 5 miles back up the road to buy a case of beer and some chips which both the family and the bus riders enjoyed together.
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1040483.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1)
Jessica and I spent much of this lull in our transport urgently recruiting the less annoying tourists to band together. From our destination, Muang Khoua, most tourists take a two day boat ride downriver to Louang Phabang. We knew the band from NZ were planning to do that. Jenny and Katareena were actually heading north, but we found another young couple, two funny musicians from Quebec, and another Canadian heading our way and convinced all of them that we would be happier sharing a boat together and paying a bit extra to avoid being on a boat with the other group.
We eventually made it to Muang Khoua shortly before sunset, crossed the Nam Ou river by boat and spent a bit of time wandering the town, finding a place to sleep, and arranging a boat for the next day (without any horrible people onboard). The hardest thing we accomplished was getting cash. There were no ATMs. It was already past closing time, and we were leaving early the next morning, so no chance to go to a bank. A lot of negotiating and begging at various businesses eventually netted us a terrible exchange rate on our U.S. dollars — people were skeptical they were real. But, it all got done and we spent a somewhat uncomfortable night in a tiny, sweaty room that seemed to be free of the various giant spiders and creepy insects I’d seen outside. Nevertheless, a bed was a welcome change from the past couple of days.
In the end, though, the two crazy bus days paid off. The next two days traveling down the Nam Ou to Louang Phabang were incredible.
We left the next morning with our Laotian captain, Sarah and Shane (from Australia and New Zealand), Jeremie and Stephan (Quebec), and Mia (Vancouver) on a boat headed from Muang Khoua to Nong Khiaw.
The entire ride was absolutely gorgeous. The Nam Ou flows through a lush valley lined with forested hills that grew wilder and more dramatic the farther south we went, eventually mirroring the amazing limestone karsts we had seen a week earlier in Ha Long Bay.
Of course, given the mountain and jungle terrain, rivers are the natural highways of Laos. So, all along the way there were villages, farms, and just a ton of people. We saw lots of folks out on the river, some for transport, others fishing. We passed a boatload of monks with umbrellas and any number of cows and water buffaloes. Most of all, I was struck by the friendliness as nearly everyone waved and smiled as we drifted by.
Of course, much like our bus ride, it turned out that our boat was not exclusively for tourists. At various times multiple local families joined us onboard. Our intercultural communication was a bit limited, but everyone seemed to get along well enough. At least it was comfortable enough for a nap.
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1040583.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1)
By mid-afternoon we arrived at our day one destination: Nong Khiaw. Nong Khiaw was a bit bigger than Muang Khoua and we made a plan to explore the area with our travel buddies after we’d all had a bit of time to settle into our various lodgings. First impression: gorgeous.
We took some advice from locals and combined it with what we’d all read in our guidebooks and decided to go investigate the Pat Hok (or Pha Thok?) caves and the waterfall nearby. This “good” map wasn’t actually that helpful…
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1040602.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1)
The seven of us wandered off down the road from Nong Khiaw, calling out “Sabaidee!” to everyone we passed and waving and smiling. Nearly everyone responded in kind, but I had an image of how this would go in reverse: A group of tourists from various Asian countries walking down a small town road in the U.S., yelling “hello” with a whole variety of terrible mispronunciations. I wasn’t sure the response in the U.S. would be as warm. And this was a pattern throughout our time in Laos. Folks were friendly, welcoming, happy to see us, and mostly just seemed comfortable. The poverty there was real (a landlocked mountainous country with a history of political turmoil and a horrible disaster during the Vietnam War), but it didn’t come with the type of desperation that poverty in the U.S. brings. People had food, family, and a place to be. It’s just that many didn’t have much beyond those basics. Anyhow, it was interesting to see the differences in how people handled life there compared to home.
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1040609.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1)
The landscape was gorgeous throughout our walk.
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1040619.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1)
Eventually, we turned off the main road and wandered through the fields to a limestone hill rising up along the side of the valley…
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1040620.jpg?resize=768%2C1024&ssl=1)
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1040621.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1)
This hillside was special. Like many of the limestone hills of the area, it is host to a series of caves. But these caves were pretty enormous, and during the destructive bombing campaign the U.S. waged in Laos during the Vietnam War, they served as a refuge for the people of the Nong Khiaw area. Inside were areas labeled where the governor had his office, where school children met, for the “hospital,” and more. Pat Hok is just one of many similar hideouts used to escape the bombing throughout that time. Incredible and a good reality check on our country’s past role in the region.
After clambering around in the caves for a bit, we continued up the road to find the advertised “waterfall.” Along the way we met various local folks, some Lao, some Khmu. We waved and smiled. They did the same. One boy showed off the shiny bug he had tied to a string. (Speaking of bugs, I also vividly recall seeing a smashed scorpion the size of my hand by the side of the road.)
The waterfall was a bit underwhelming, but it was fun to hang out with the kids there, and we all jumped in the river for a bit of a cooldown.
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1040663.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1)
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1040664.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1)
And the walk back was, once again, incredibly beautiful.
The next day, Jeremie and Stephan decided to stay behind, while the rest of us hopped aboard another boat to head down to Louang Phabang. We were, as always, joined by other Lao travelers, but this time, we had far less of a view due to heavy rain throughout most of the day. This is what Nong Khiaw looked like when we woke up…
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1040686.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1)
And what it looked like as we were about to board the boat…
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1040687.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1)
But it was still a lovely trip down the Nam Ou to where it joined the Mekong River and brought us to Louang Phabang.
![](https://i0.wp.com/gabrielcohn.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/P1040703.jpg?resize=900%2C675&ssl=1)
A memorable four days of travel between hiking around Sa Pa and arriving in the amazing city of Louang Phabang. More on that later, but before I end this, I should tell you that, two days after arriving there, I had another job interview. This time I was in an internet cafe with a good, cheap connection, and I got the job.
Side note: From the time we went to sleep in Sa Pa at the end of our trek to the time we arrived in Louang Phabang, three of our friends back in the U.S. gave birth to three awesome children (and a fourth was born a couple of weeks earlier in our trip). It’s easy to remember how old Arden, Bella, Mila, and Simon are since we’ve always known them as the four “Vietnam babies” and they’re among the first of a wave of kids born to our age-cohort friends. And they’re teenagers now! Yikes!
Another wonderful episode – enjoyed it.
Wow! Both for the photos and your travelogue. I feel almost as if I had that adventure with you.