Dalama Adventures Tale of two corporate types ditching their jobs and traveling the world for 14 months... check out all photos, blogs & interesting tid bits at http://www.dalama.net

Our experience getting our Laos visas and crossing the border through immigration went so smoothly, it was a bit scary.  Our agent had our visas and passport departure stamp from Thailand already organized.  We soared through the Thai border and were shuffled by a long-tail boat across the Mekong River border of Thailand and Laos, up to get our passports stamped in the Huay Xai crossing in Laos.  We were met by our agent's Lao office personnel who directed us up into town to their office.  We were then stuffed into a tuk-tuk, and heading off to the bus station to make our bus which was supposed to leave in only 15 minutes time.  After driving a couple hundred meters, our tuk-tuk driver stops, and signals to us to get out.  We look around confused, not seeing any busses, and wondering how much further the bus station was, and how far we'd now have to walk with our packs in the rain.  Then a grey mini-van pulls up, and loads our bags into the van.  We ask "bus station?" and the driver shakes his head yes, but not seemingly to our question.  He was focussed on getting us into the van and on the road.  Maybe the tuk-tuk was having mechanical problems, we thought, as we all blindly piled into the strange van, trusting that the driver was going to take us to the bus station.  There were 6 of us in the van - a woman from Spain, a guy from Italy and his girlfriend from Argentina (both living in the Dominican Republic now), and some guy we thought might be a Laos businessman, but we weren't really sure.  After about an hour, we're still driving, in air conditioned comfort, on a nice paved road.  They had said the bus station was a ways out of town, but by this time, we were over 45 minutes late for our bus... something wasn't adding up.  We got out a variety of guide books and started piecing together phrases in Lao, to ask the driver where we were.  After taking another 15 minutes to get the words together, the Italian guy Sury leaned over to the guy we thought to be Lao, and asked him if he spoke English.  He spoke a bit, and he was actually a Japanese tourist.  He said that we were actually "on the bus."  Just our very good fortune, an air conditioned mini-van ride for the next 5 hours... we really lucked out!  The roads were newly paved and we cruised northbound to the town of Luang Namtha.  we made it in only 4 hours, and just in time to catch the departing bus at 1:30 up to Udom Xai - the central transportation hub of Northern Laos.  The others decided they would continue northward with Darrin and I, thinking the remote trekking adventure in the province of Phongsali that we were seeking, sounded like a cool option.  

Our Japanese buddy from the bus introduced us to his French speaking restaurant owner friend at the bus stop, and so we piled into his restaurant and ate some yummy foe (noodle, veggie and meat soup).  Halfway through our meal we looked over and saw a ton of people loading into the very small micro-bus that was heading to Udom Xai in an hour, so we quickly paid up and hustled onto the bus to grab seats, which in Laos, are always unassigned.  If you don't keep yourself seated on the bus at least an hour before the scheduled departure, you'll never get a seat and you'll end up standing or worse, lying across people and their animals and produce for your 10 hour bus journey.  We were quite impressed that we all got seats, and made it smoothly, with no breakdowns, to Udom Xai just before sunset.  We were told at the bus station that our bus to Phongsali - a 10 hour journey- departed at 8:00 am the next day, and we would need to be there an hour before to buy tickets.  So we planted ourselves at a Chinese-run, very dirty guest house across from the bus station.  It happened to be the cleanest of five that we checked out that night, and was also under $5/night (guess you can't expect cleanliness at $5/night).  We ventured out to find a local family restaurant, and went with the tried and true friend rice with veggies, all cooked up to death so we hopefully avoid getting sick for the long bus ride tomorrow.  

Today was an amazing journey.  So hard to believe it was smooth, especially after our bus and transportation experiences in Myanmar, we were expecting the worst.  Not to mention the trip should have taken us two days, we completed just in one day, including crossing the border.  I think we were very lucky... it can't all be this easy!