Very Inflammable Persons

3/16/2011
-Spent most of the day sitting at a cafe in deep conversation with Alex, wandered around the city a bit and had some deliciousdollar duck noodle soup for dinner. parted ways with Alex
-caught a Tuk-Tuk to the bus station at 7, bus left at eight. it was rainy and cold outside for most of the ride, the seats were pretty comfortable, but i was definitely missing my sleeper bus. sat next to an 18 year old American girl who was travelling with three friends and a puppy that they had adopted on the road.
stopped at about one AM for a snack, the food was free, but i didn't have any because i was already struggling to fall asleep and figured food wouldn't help.
-then back on the bus, headed up into the mountains.
-at about three AM on an empty stretch of mountain road the bus came to a sudden stop and started smoking profusely from the engine. people started yelling about a fire, and there was a panicked crush for the door, luckly we were sitting in front, so it just took some shoving to get out, Cami, the American girl, got punched in the head. Her freinds and puppy were sitting in the back over the flaming engine, and were passed out cold when the fire started. Left their shoes, bags and the puppy on the bus. when we evactuated the bus it was pouring rain and frigid cold. luckly i had a raincoat and a flashlight in my bag, i was still freezing, but at least not soaked. we had to hike up the road to get away from the cloud of noxious smoke. Took about 20 minutes to put out the fire which had tendrils reaching over the top of the bus. they were pouring water on it, which probably didn't help the situation. but eventually it went out. we went into the bus to try and find these poor girls bags, shoes and pup, rescued the bags and the shoes but no sign of the tiny pup. also opened the roof hatches to ventilate the smoke. finally the pup turned up wandering the street around the bus and crying pathetically. after hanging out in the rain waiting for the smoke to clear, people started to filter back into the bus. most immediately fell asleep, which was sort of a surprise to me, i didn't sleep until the next morning, and then only for an hour.
3/17/2011
-treated to a beautiful sunrise over a remarkable mountainous rainforest, from inside the burnt out bus, also treated to a terrible headache from whatever terrible burnt plastics and shit i had been inhaling in the bus all night.
-had to wait until noon for another bus to pick us up. then still had a five hour ride to Luang Probang. which took even longer because about 20 K out of town the road had turned into a total mudpit and we had to wait for the traffic ahead of us to be extracted from the mud.
-then while our bus was slogging along, a rock busted the brake fluid tank, so the bus came to a stop again and let out some smoke, everybody on the bus, frazzled by the previous bus fire immediately started to evacuate. but we were so close they just topped off the fluid and continued on. didn't make it to Luang Probang til about 7 PM been awake for over 36 hours, with maybe one hour of sleep. Luckly managed to find a cheap nice guest house quickly. Ate some food at the guest house and passed out pretty early.
-what was supposed to be a 8-9 hour bus ride turned out to be 23 hours, the average speed of travel was 15.3 Km/h
Pictures and such from the lovely town of Luang Probang soon.