For those passengers hoping to get to...

The trip from Bangkok to Vientienne took about 14 hours. Most of this time was spent on an overnight bus, generally sleeping, and the rest was spent sitting/standing around waiting (for our bus, for the border to open, to exit Thailand, to get our Laos visas, etc). During the past four months, we have travelled overnight by plane, train, boat, and bus. It is not our favorite way of travelling but often it is the most practical. (Joey likes to insist that he doesn't sleep a wink on these journeys but I have the evidence from our trip to Laos to prove otherwise.) Overnight travel does provide some magical moments like seeing the Mekong river for the first time at dawn (see the picture below).

Anytime we move locations, it takes a day. We end up either travelling throughout a day (or a day and a night, see the trip from Koh Phagnan to Bangkok) or arriving early but still losing most of a day to necessities. Even though we arrived in Vientienne by 9am, it still took most of a day to find a place to stay, get our bearings, take a nap, and sample the local shopping.

How we plan our routes and buy our tickets depends on the country we are in. Basically, I pick the next place we want to go, look online and in the travel books to determine a general idea of how much it should cost, and then delay buying the ticket until the day before we plan to leave. Simple procrastination tends to limit our options so that we only have to pick between the early bus or the late bus.

In China, we generally went to the train/bus stations to buy our tickets. Train travel is quite simple in China and I could generally, if rather slowly, figure out the schedules and buy our tickets. For our first transit in Thailand, we did the same thing. However, we don't read or speak Thai and the woman that we bought our tickets from didn't speak much English. This is how we ended up on the overnight slow boat to Koh Tao. Since then, we have generally purchased tickets through our guesthouses or travel agents. It adds a little bit to the price but I am willing to pay more for the convenience factor, and to avoid getting on another slow boat.

As Joey learned, it always pays to ask for all of the details: when does it leave, when does it arrive, where does it arrive, are there any stops, is there air-conditioning, etc. Even with all of our questions answered, there is usually a level of uncertainty in any transit day. This was most evident when we were waiting for the catamaran to take us to Koh Phagnan. The announcement over the loudspeaker was not directed at those passengers going to to Koh Tao/Koh Samui but rather "those passengers hoping to go to Koh Tao/Koh Samui." This was not comforting, though it did make docking in Koh Tao a pleasant surprise.

We have only bought one set of bus tickets in Laos, we leave for Vang Vieng tomorrow, so I don't know which will be the best option here. Travel in Laos is slow and pretty inexpensive. We learned from our dinnermates last night to always expect the worse. A 150k trip can take two hours or eleven hours, you never know. Tomorrow should be another adventure.