Off the Beaten Path

We are heading off of the tourist path some to go to a small town and to visit some caves tomorrow. We packed everything up in Vientiane and headed to the songthaew stand to get a ride to the bus station. There was a boss man who had very good English and did the negotiating and we had to storm off to finally get him to give us a price that was reasonable. The boss man then called one of his drivers over who directed us to his songthaew. I threw my bag into the back but was startled by something moving around and I screamed like a little girl! It was a live chicken in a plastic bag. The man was going to have chicken for dinner and didn't want to kill it until he was ready. It was pretty strange driving around in the back of a pickup truck being stared at by a chicken in a plastic bag.

We got to the bus station and bought tickets for Vieng Kham and then quickly loaded onto a local bus that was scheduled to pull out of the station in 10 minutes. Our bags were stuffed into the cargo hold of the bus along with bags full of chilies. Surprisingly the bus pulled out of the station on time and I high fived Janelle. As soon as the bus had pulled out of the station it pulled over and a bunch of locals selling items like toilet paper, gum, meat skewers with sticky rice and drinks hopped onto the bus.

After a while the bus finally took off for real. The bus was constantly swerving all over the road in an attempt to avoid countless pot holes. Somehow despite all of the swerving the bus was still bouncing up and down rather violently as the glass windows vibrated against each other. The bus also made frequent stops to pick up new passengers and drop off existing passengers. The bus continued to stop to let more random vendors on the bus to sell their wares. The bus stopped on the side of the road for everyone to quickly jump out and pee in the bushes, men on the right side of the bus, the women to the left side.

The bus dropped us in Vieng Kham, a town in the middle of nowhere, where the major North to South highway meets up with an East to West road. We were quickly approached by a man driving a songthaew who asked if we wanted a ride to anywhere. We told him our destination was Ban Khoun Kham and the driver showed us on his phone that it would be 25,000 LAK ($3.13 USD) each. We tried to negotiate with the driver but then he just walked off and got into his songthaew that was nearly full. I chased after him and agreed to pay his price. As I later found out, it was the fixed price for everyone, foreigners and locals alike.

We started to drive up into the mountains and the views were really beautiful, lots of small towns along the road with mountains rising in the background.

As the songthaew climbed a particularly steep hill we passed a broken down bus that was carrying cabbage, lettuce and cucumbers. The driver of our songthaew and the driver of the broken down bus had a negotiation and then our driver pulled over next to the broken bus and instructed everyone to climb out. Both drivers then worked together to load all of the vegetables on top of the songthaew.

When the top was full they started to fill the inside of the songthaew.

We were then instructed to get back into the songthaew with our luggage and all of the other people. The songthaew was so packed that four people had to stand on the back for the rest of the drive.

When we got to Ban Khoun Kham, it was obvious that it was not a destination of many tourists. We were the only non locals that we saw and people everywhere looked at us and smiled and said "hello". We went to the market and you could tell that it was a really rural town with lots of foraging and locally caught animals for sale. Here are some of the stranger things we saw for sale:

Check out all of the pictures from the market and the rest of today's pictures at the slideshow below: