Nearly involved in a crash going from Thailand to Laos.

Written 18th November 2012

We were picked up outside our pink guest house in Chang Mai and after an hour of driving around collecting other people to fill the van we were on our way.

The driver was a real mad man and after a lot of driving, a stop for lunch, and our driver hitting a dog, (shocking) we arrived at The White Temple.

It was a very interesting place. It is designed to be a message to young Thais to lead them back to Buddah. It shows the wickedness of the modern world. 

We couldn't take photos inside but the inside had a big Buddah, a smaller one and a wax Monk. (Though there was some dispute as to weather it was intact a very still real monk, I think it was a wax Monk.) All the walls were very beautifully painted in an illustrative way including all sorts of popular images such as Angry Birds, Super Man etc, as well as world images such as the plane crashing into The Twin Towers etc.

After we left we witnessed a crash of our own. We were just about to cross the road and were waiting for a truck and 4 Wheel Drive to go by. Then the 4 Wheel Drive just changed lanes into the truck and the 4 Wheel Drive got smashed up big time. Bits or car and bumper came flying towards us, Steve turned to push me out of the way but I had already leapt behind a parked car!

Neadless to say we were both okay, nothing hit us in the end, and the people in both vehicles were all okay as well. The 4 Wheel drive was lucky it wasn't going faster or it could have been a lot less happy ending.

As it was we got back in with our crazy driver and made it safely to the Laos boarder where we had to get some American dollars. Neither of us had ever seen real Americal dollars before and we surprised. It looks like fake money! I can see where the got the designs for Monopoly...

Anyway, we got our passports stamped, got on a river boat and crossed the boarder into Laos 

where we bought our Visas and were taken to this shuttle. At which time we realised that in Laos they drive on the right hand side of the road!

We were taken to the bus station where the driver of the shuttle exchanged some money for us (we were a bit weary as we were not quite sure of the exchange) and put us on our V.I.P. bus. The bus ride was quite long and we were hungry by the time we stopped for dinner. We hopped back on the bus and as we were driving down the dark road I realised two tourists had hopped off. Steve went to ask the driver again how long it was to our stop and it turns out that that was our stop, they just hadn't told us! So were were deposited by the side of the road with our packs and walked back to the bus station which was 12km from town. So we were stranded there and had to sleep in this awful hotel that was flu of bugs and smelt overwhelmingly of plaster or something like that. 

We didn't sleep well!

The next day though we were able to catch a Tuk Tuk to Namtha.