I caught the ‘VIP’ bus from Vientiene to Pakse in Southern Laos last night. It wasn’ta great start as I was waiting for around an hour and only got picked up about ten minutes before departure time, crammed into a truck version of a songthingymabob with our luggage. I had to laugh when we arrived at the bus station though as it was small time carnage everyone rushing to get on the bus. There were around 6 of them leaving, and some folk had booked tickets together, or separately assuming they would be on the same bus, and well…they weren’t.
I was seriously impressed by the blinged up buses, I’ve never seen such a colourful parade of double decker buses before – some of them with custom paintjobs, large letters on the front like ‘KING OF BUS’, and I wouldn’t like to be the driver of the bus that never had multicoloured lights on the front, and a flourescent lit engine bay.
I was very impressed with the buses though – very comfy indeed, a small meal served, water, a few sweets and even a face cleaning cloth. The seats reclined, there was a video (although we never got one), about the only thing I could gripe about is the overhead compartments aren’t wide enough to fit much more than a tootbrush.
VIP buses. I take it all back (although it was full of bloody tourists….erm, like me)…the only thing that annoyed me was not getting a pic of the blingged up buses.