Kunming to Loas.....beddy loooong time for you.

One overnight bus south from Kunming to Mengla in Yunnan, China 22hrs
One Mini bus to Mohan, China with a mudslide and a flat tire to mix it up a bit 3 hours
One rickshaw to the bank and then the next bus 25 minutes
One 2 mile walk from the Chinese check point 30 minutes or so
Attain Loas Visa at the crossing point 30 minutes
No buses out of town till morning 26hrs
Sleep over night in Boten, Loas (one road border town), hang out at a Loasian barbeque and practicing my Loa while eating on chicken, pork skin and duck heads with sticky rice.
Bus comes to town and is full, forced to catch 12 passenger minibus that is eventually packed with 20 people and 15 boxes of jeans headed for market in Udemxai, not Luang Prabang where I want to go, but have no choice. 3hrs...with my knees pressed against my chest..super comfy!
Tourist bus from Udemxai to Luang Prabang 8-9hrs
Hop the back of a motorbike 5 minutes to Guesthouse...enjoy glorious shower!!!

40+ hours spent in transit over a possible 60 which was a little extreme, even for me.

I'm not there anymore, but Loas was beautiful, a lush green place spread unevenly over bright red earth, from atop the leafy hills of Northern Loas were some stunning views and I would have stopped in every second village if I could as they were teeming with photo opts, but we just kept barreling along. Long, twisting and treacherous, would be the best way I could describe the roads, if you've been there you know what I mean, maybe not as rugged as Cambodia, but at least in the desert you don't run the risk of plummeting over a cliff or having a head on collision at one of the countless blind corners. Once the sun goes down, the driver goes twice as fast trying, no doubt to make up the lost time he spent dodging villagers in the daylight. You see it's not so much the distance we covered in all that time, it's that the roads, provided they're still there after a heavy rainfall are questionable, on a good day and precariously slither up and down mountain after mountain after mountain. It's no wonder the region still maintains that charming underdeveloped feel that it's so famous for.

Every few minutes we would pass a small village or group of villages walking along the side of the hauling all manner of things, wood, produce, television set...you know the basics. The villages seemed more or less the same after the first 20 or so...small dusty clusters of what can only be described as huts. Hand woven thatch walls with thick dried leafy roofs. Cows, pigs, chickens and astonishing number babies and kids scurried about stopping sometimes to watch you whiz past. I wondered what it must be like to live out here, sure, they have electricity and I did see a few TVs, but it's a far cry from an urban townhouse complex. I couldn't help, but wonder if some of them have ever left, or would even want to? I wanted to know more about these places and about the people who lived there. I wanted to stop so many times to take photos and wander around, but it just goes to show that the richest images are often on the road less traveled, or at least at the places one doesn't usually stop on that road. I had a lot of time to peer and ponder out the window of a bus or a train and I feel like I want to describe every fleeting detail it's a rolling memory and far too vast to get into one spot. Go see it, you'll know what I mean. As the thick green jungle dissolved into inky black night, bright orange moon lit up the sky.