Hello everyone and welcome back to our crazy journey hitchhiking from Thailand to Spain! In the last post we left Vang Vieng and were trying to hitchhike to Luang Prabang. If you have read the last post you will know that it turned out to be a pretty challenging day and that we ended up staying in a dusty village on top of the mountain pass!
We woke up nice and early that morning in order to give ourselves the best chance of making it to Luang Prabang in the same day. However, before we went any further it was definitely time for our morning coffee! We always travel with our trusty Aeropress, good coffee anywhere (assuming you have nice coffee powder!).
As you can see, the views from our guest house were pretty spectacular but we didn't have time to hang around as it was time to hit the road. Actually, we were pretty nervous about the day ahead of us. We were thinking how challenging it had been the day before and that this day would be no different.
We walked for about 1 km before we came upon a good spot to start hitchhiking and put our bags down and started the wait for our first ride down the mountain. Let's just say it took a while to get a ride! There were literally no cars coming by so we settled in for a long wait.
When waiting for rides we do several things to pass the time; this could be getting the ukulele out to get some practise and maybe try to sing a few songs or just come up with different games to play to pass the time.
We were however, in an amazingly beautiful place and the wait up on the hill was actually very nice with all the birdsongs and the fantastic view of the mountains fading away into the distance. Spectacular!
After what might have been two hours we got picked up by a Chinese guy working for Power China who are improving the infrastructure of Laos (there are some hidden agendas for sure) and we went with him for a good hour before he dropped us of in a small town. What was surprising about this small town, and when we say small we really do mean it, was the amount of students coming out of the school! It seemed as if there were thousands of students which really didn't add up to the size of the town!
We grabbed an early lunch and then walked out the town for another 2 or 3 km until we came to a good spot to wait for our next ride. In this particular spot we had to wait for two hours or more but it wasn't a problem as the local children were on their lunch break and were rather curious about these strange blond foreigners sitting beside the road without any means of transport.
Some of them could speak a little bit of English and we had a good chat with them and they were actually quite curious about our ukulele so Malin played them a song, much to their delight!
Eventually their lunch break was up and they all headed back into town to school and left us alone waiting for a ride. This time it was Alex's turn to play a tune on the uke!
Finally after what seemed to have been an eternity we got picked up by 3 Chinese men in a truck and let us get in the back with our bags. What followed was probably our most uncomfortable ride ever! The road was incredibly dusty and bumpy and by the end of it we were covered in dust and it felt like our spines had been compressed by all the bumps!
They dropped us off in the town before Luang Prabang and we gave them a massive thank you and they also wanted some selfies with us! This was our first taste of Chinese hospitality.
We walked to the other side of the town and got a ride after just a few minutes and half an hour later we arrived in Luang Prabang looking pretty rough after our crazy day of hitchhiking!
We walked around a little trying to find a reasonably priced guest house and eventually we found a nice big room overlooking the river for a good price.
If anyone has ever been to Luang Prabang you will know what a beautiful little town it is. Luang Prabang is World Heritage Centre and is an beautiful town to walk around and in on the little streets.
We spent a lot of time just wandering around town and soaking up the atmosphere. The river is also a great place to check out with the possibility of taking boat tours. If you don't want to splash on a tour then you can just take a wonder along the bank of the river.
When in Luang Prabang you should definitely pass by UXO (Unexploded Ordinance Information Centre) to find out more about the problems that people in Laos are continuing to face on a daily basis due to all the left over, unexploded, bombs from the Vietname War. If you would like to know more about this and learn the mind boggling statistics about the left over bombs head over to this website: https://www.luangprabang-laos.com/Visit-UXO-Laos-center
The river allows for lots of great photography and we managed to snap this picture of a monk crossing the bamboo bridge and the sunset behind the mountains.
If you would like to watch our video about this post check it out below and don't forget to subscribe for up to date videos!
Thanks as always everyone for reading!!! If you have any questions please feel free to ask! Have a great day!
Alex and Malin
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Whaaat - Thailand to Spain? I love hitchhiking, but I would be afraid to do that.. how did you manage it with visas? Have you had them before or did they give it to you on the border?
Anyway, it seems to be a great experience! :)
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Yeah, crazy journey right! Actually visas were pretty easy for the route we took. The only one that was a little tricky was the visa for China (we have a post about it here: https://steemit.com/travelfeed/@timezonejunkies/getting-visas-for-china-in-laos). The only other visas we needed were for Azerbaijan and Alex for Turkey as he is British. Actually we have our route on google maps here if you would like to see: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dKeTjIFM0cgSP2Wefp8L3ZvOgTE&usp=sharing
The rest of the countries were visa on arrival or visa exemption.
Where have you hitchhiked? Thanks for taking the time to comment :)
Haha, yeah.. It's good to know that "fake" accomodation, flight tickets etc. are enough to get visa. I'd like to make journeys like this one when I finally buy a van and start living in it :) And one of the things I'm afraid about are visas.. So I'm really happy to hear it's not that hard everywhere.
Well, most of my trips are in Europe, so I've hitched in most of European countries, but nothing else. Right now I'm hitchhiking around Israel :)
Looking forward to your next posts about this journey.. Car accident?! I wonder what comes next :D
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