Ever So Early
Trip Start
Jan 09, 2009
1
42
44
Trip End
Feb 23, 2009
Kunming, Yunnan Province, China
Friday, February 20, 2009
It was warm and dark, being the early hours, when I left Luang Prabang and indeed Laos. As soon as I made way my way down to the main street after alerting, I think, the son of the guest house owner to let me out of the building, I was quickly approached by a tuk tuk, you mean a 'get in' approach, as I was soon whisked away to the Chinese bus terminus.
It was ever so early, the place was closed, so I waited outside - obviously.
Dawn's daylight crept, and just as it did so, a procession of orange clad monks emerged doing breakfast alms as they dutifully - or was it custom-arily - stood outside a cafe chanting some salutation or prayer. After, I think, receiving 'something' to put in their frontal metal urns, they went to the next port of call. Watching and hearing them helped to pass the time away, I guess.
Back in Sihanoukville, Johannes couldn't help commenting, when seeing a monk or two in the restaurant of the guest house where we stayed, that:
'they should get a proper job instead of taking advantage of (other folk's) generosity and reciting some meaningless prayer about "blessing you." '
I don't know if any of you hold the same view.
To cut a long story short, I got on the sleeper bus. However, one of the drivers wasn't going to let me stay on unless I produced a 'proper' bus ticket. I know I should have booked the cheaper ticket here and not from some rip-off merchant. Well, this is now known in hindsight. Some helpful young Australian travelers managed to get me out of a sticky situation by explaining things in Mandarin. The driver also managed to contact the rip-off tour agency proprietor and get things sorted who did return with a proper ticket.
The bus slowly jostled, bolted, and bumped its way up the main road to the Chinese border. There's really not much to say about the journey, just a repeat performance of the way down: stopped off in Mengla, and the following morning arrived in the morass of Kunming, and with the Australians, made my way to The Hump, er...by taxi, of course.
Actually, there was one thing of interest. Around Luang Namtha, the bus stopped to pick up a rough-and-ready student-ish Polish guy who'd been traveling in Laos, and who actually came down from Kunming by motorbike which gave out just before he flagged down the bus. He vicariously passed it off to some of the surrounding locals.
