Video: Muang Khua - Dien Bien Phu Bus Ride

Probably not the last of the bus stories

0600 January 6, 2008:

The darkness before dawn is pierced by a couple of fires burning on the riverbank below our guesthouse. The Nam Ou flows silently and Muang Khua is quiet except for the subdued conversations of the early risers huddled around the fires.

It's not long before the dawn tranquility is dispelled by the engines of vehicles approaching the river crossing and those of boats being prepared for the day's trips along the river. Muang Khua is the transport hub for northern Laos, serving the traffic plying the river down to the Mekong and upstream to the hinterland, as well as the roads connecting Phongsali province to Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. Today promises to be extra busy as Laos' President and his entourage are coming to meet with their Vietnamese counterparts to discuss the construction of a bridge to facilitate trade.

Yesterday we completed our hundred kilometre paddle down the Nam Ou from Hat Xa. It's a welcome relief to not have to get back into wet clothes and dunk our bums in the river again this morning. We're having a hasty breakfast, waiting for our guides to arrive from wherever it was they disappeared to last night. Today we'll be taking a bus across the mountain range that forms the border with Vietnam and our guides have undertaken to organise our tickets for the ride and ensure we get aboard on time for departure at 7.00.

By 6.30 a nacreous light is penetrating the cloud filled valley, revealing wreaths of mist swirling on the surface of the river. It's cold. The early morning light also shows our bus on the landing on the far side of the river. It's already being loaded. We're beginning to wonder if our guides will show when Michael, a fellow traveller who'll be making the same journey today, decides it's time to go. We wait another fifteen minutes and decide to go too. It's been way too long since we've had the luxuries of hot water and a comfortable bed and we want to get out of here today - guides or no guides. It takes another several minutes to negotiate the creaking flights of bush timber steps down to the bank and then cross the sewage trenches and litter-strewn wasteland to the ferry landing. The boys show up just as we're about to hail a boat to cross the river.

We arrive on the opposite bank just before the bus is due to leave and Kong strides up the hill to the ticket office. We needn't have worried. The crowd around the bus has probably a tonne and a half of trade goods which are still being passed up to the man atop the already impressive pile on the bus's roof. We're not going anywhere for a while. Bags of shoes, stacks of various sizes of plastic tubs, sacks of grain, flours and chaff, cartons of softdrink - all manner of goods from Laos and China are hoisted aboard. Michael, who's a strapping young lad from the Netherlands, is conscripted to help pass up the biggest and bulkiest items.

Kong arrives back with our tickets and asks the bus driver to make sure we get a seat. The driver laughs and indicates the falang can have a seat on the roof. No translation is required and everybody's laughing their heads off. Little do we know...

As the luggage net is being secured over the mountain of gear atop the bus, the ferry fires up for its first trip of the day. The ferry is actually a barge with cantilevered ramps on each end. The barge is secured against the river's flow by cables which rise to a massive steel hawser that spans the river valley. Locomotion is provided by an ancient tug that looked like it was probably taking fire from American helicopters on the Mekong a few decades ago. It has a serious list and the river floods over its portside transom when the power is applied.

The barge returns amid the tug's diesel reek and roar. It bears a brand-new luxury coach, the plastic covers from the factory still over its seats. Everyone on the ramp looks on longingly as its driver rolls it off the barge and disappears up the road to Vietnam. I imagine it's off to pick up the Vietnamese dignitaries - there's surely no-one else along that 60Km stretch of unsealed mountain road who would warrant such luxury!

By 8.00 am our bus is flat-spring loaded. In addition to the roof, the entire floor of the bus has been packed. They've even unscrewed the chair seats to pack the spaces below, then reattached the seats as well as the load below permits. Watching this, we notice that all the seats already have personal items claiming them. Hmmm. Maybe they weren't kidding about the roof.

The bus is held in place on the ramp by piles of rocks behind its wheels. The driver climbs aboard and all the locals begin walking up the hill away from the landing. We comprehend the bus will climb to a flat spot above the river before the passengers are admitted. Safety first! Good idea!

The bus pulls to a halt, the doors open and suddenly we're at a Japanese train station. It's all elbows and shoulders as everybody surges for the door. When the melee is over, the ticketmaster's headcount reveals 41 people packed into a bus with 20 seats. In addition to the load. The concept of personal space is annihilated. We'd fought bravely, but the aftermath finds Michael and Amber on either side of the bus's door, while I've been swept almost to the back of the bus. I'm sitting in the aisle, atop some slabs of redbull, knees pulled up to chin, with someone's knees in my back and someone else's back in my face.

The locals take pity on Amber and rearrange the load to give her a sack to sit on, but she's still got knees in her back and a fellow in front of her who leans back into her whenever the bus climbs a grade. Michael would be invisible among the seven people packed around him were it not for his height advantage. Still, for a big bloke he's been folded into a remarkably small space. The three guys standing between Amber and Michael are on the doorstep and have to virtually climb on top of their neighbours to give the inward folding door the space to move. Once the door is closed, something akin to Boyle's Law smashes them hard up against it.

By the way: The dozen mountain tribesfolk who were at the vanguard of the assault and secured seats in the rear of the bus? Not one of 'em had a ticket. The ticketmaster harangued them for a minute then took the cash right there above my head. I have no idea how he made it so far down the crammed aisle, much less what (or who) he was standing on.

It's going to be a long eight hours...