A first-person travel vlog by Nate and Kara Buchanan documenting overland travel from Luang Prabang through Vientiane and onward to Bangkok. The chunk covers their experience on a winding overnight bus (uncomfortable but novel), an early-morning stop in Vientiane where they kill time at coffee and pizza shops, buying train tickets for an overnight train to Bangkok (a ~14-hour trip arriving ~7am), and a border official charging an unexpected extra fee. Moments of humor and personal commentary about sleep, legroom, and plans appear throughout.
Chapters
Here's your first class VIP.
Bus tickets. I know already that I've made a bad decision.
I just don't know how bad. Pretty much my business class of an airplane.
The novelty of this is at least making it fun for now.
We haven't even left the parking lot yet. Comfy?
How's that leg room?
I'm all the way down the mo. I can't. My. I can't. I have to curl my toes to fit them in here. Besides that, as long as I turn my feet sideways.
We are off 13 minutes ahead of schedule.
Off to a good start. See you in the morning.
Good night.
Good night.
It's almost 11 o' clock which means we've been on this bus for about three hours. The entire time we have constantly been going around curves and up and down mountains. If you get car sick, this ride is not for you. And now we're going to attempt to get some sleep.
We have made it to some random bus stop ahead of schedule. Unfortunately it's only 5:30 in the morning.
What are you supposed to do.
At a random bus stop at 5:30 in the morning?
Well, where everybody else is going.
Kind of thought everybody would pile off in the center. I'm going to attempt to set the scene.
It's now been about 30 minutes since we got to Vientiane. Neither one of us have spoken about the ride because I just spent the last 30 minutes holding on for dear life on the back of our jeep. Make sure our bags didn't fall off.
How was it?
How bad of an idea was it? So I say it was a bad idea.
I bet I woke up a hundred times.
Say I probably gave you a roast of your money on amount of times.
I was just never not moving. Like he was either turning, stopping or going. So it was hard to go to sleep. If I was like constantly going like this.
It seemed like such a good idea. When we got home last night I was like, oh this is gonna be great. I'm gonna sleep all night. No problem. And then. Yeah, I think the roads were just so windy that I just slid from one side of my seat seat to the other.
I put on my seat belt like halfway through.
That's a good idea.
I think it helped.
Oh man.
I slept way more after that.
Now we have been dropped off in the center. We got on the Jeep. For some reason we were the only ones that got off. I have literally done zero research about the city that we're in.
And it's not even 6 o' clock in the morning yet. We're just sitting.
I think I'm gonna eat my Oreos.
On the side of the road. That sounds like a mood enhancer when coffee's not available.
So now we're gonna eat Oreos.
We came to this coffee shop. We're gonna sit here until they open at 7.
Cup tie. Cup tie.
It's about time, Gary.
You deserve more than that cup of coffee. I kind of breakfast. This is where we're hanging out for the day.
They have good wi fi. We're not leaving.
We've gotta kill time until like 3 o' clock this afternoon and then head to the train station. Catch our overnight train.
Best birthday ever.
Faith's real birthday. Hey, we're just pretending it was yesterday. His birthday's over. Dear Ma.
Happy birthday to you.
Blow out your candles, Nate. Blow them out.
We're going on a super crazy journey.
Inside. Through the doors we shall venture today.
I tried my hardest to make today exciting.
I'm so tired.
I'm too tired.
You tired for coffee?
That's what I thought.
I can stay here all day.
I think that's the current plan.
Looks like we're gonna be here for a while. Let the coffee continue.
We are racking up a tab at this place.
Submerged.
I go to buy our train tickets. Kara's already eaten half the pizza. So today we've gone between this pizza shop and this coffee shop. We started at the coffee shop, went to the pizza shop, going back to the coffee shop and Kara's point in putting up coffee. And this starts our 14 hour journey to Bangkok. We should be there by 7am tomorrow morning. Yay.
The Laos border official decided that he wanted to make an extra 150 today. So because we were leaving on a Sunday, he charged us an extra 10,000 kip per person. Luckily, I had exactly 20,000 kip left. So we got to leave the country and now we have zero money.
We're supposed to leave at 5. Not off to a good start.
Now we're getting on this train.
Stop.
Three, four. That's us. We're five. Thank you. Oh, we have a full seat to ourself on this one. How you feeling? Don't look very happy. Bye. Louse. This is not his first rodeo.
This is like my worst nightmare, having to make multiple beds.
Is it going to be better than the bus?
It's about 10 minutes after 6. I think we're almost there. Sl pen d.
Just like that, the beds disappear. The bad thing is.
We'Re going to be there shortly and we have no clue where we're going or where we're staying.
So we go to Starbucks.
Great idea. We're going to Starbucks.
This is the place to be on a Monday morning. You deserve this.
Careful, macchiato.
I love you.
Your love is not unconditional.
We were supposed to have to wait three hours to get our room until 2pm but thankfully she found us a room right away.
I love this place. Oh, the bed is squishy.
We'll put some texts over you.
Do you see your dad dancing?
Some thank you text. Thanks for watching this FaceTime. Subscribe please.
