Riding on the roof of a bus is the last place I ever
expected to be when I began my travels in South East Asia. My partner and I
had heard rumours from other travellers that people are able to ride on the
roof on the seven hour bus journey from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang in
northern Laos. The bus is always overcrowded (as most are in South East Asia)
so if you arrive at the bus stop late, you can ride on top.
Neither of us has ridden on top of any vehicle before and
the idea of it sounds pretty wild. So we purposefully arrive at the bus stop
in Vang Vieng minutes before the bus was to pull away.
We
drive through villages dusty and brown, clustered in small bamboo huts on
stilts
“No seat inside. Full. You go up.” A short, stocky
Laotian man shakes his head and waves his hand towards the roof of the bus.
There, another Laotian man is pulling up backpacks held up one by one by a
group of latecomers like us, securing them with thick rope.
My friend and I look at each other and smile.
We hand up our packs then excitedly climb up the ladder and
settle ourselves on the roof. Soon the remaining stragglers join us and we try
to contort ourselves into semi-comfortable positions around luggage and limbs.
A short metal rail about six inches high runs along each side of the roof
(presumably to keep the bags from sliding off) and we lean against this
talking and smoking. Before long the ancient engine revs up and with several
coughs we are on our way.
As soon as we start picking up speed we realize that not
only is riding on the roof of a bus cool, but that it’s also freezing cold.
Pulling on sweaters we all hold on to each other, not only for warmth but also
for the added security that we won’t tumble off as we bump through potholes
and curve around steep bends. But soon I am so completely overwhelmed by the
breathtaking world which envelops us, I have ignored the numbness which is
spreading from my butt to my legs from the cramped position I am sitting in.
I feel like I have stepped back in time.
Children
from tiny villages wave to us and shout, “Hello... Thank You... Hello”
All around us ancient limestone mountains majestically claw
their way to the sky, rupturing out of dried brown rice paddies which hug the
riverbed snaking alongside the road. We drive through villages dusty and
brown, clustered in small bamboo huts on stilts. Children, some dressed, some
naked, run down to the road waving and shouting, “Hello! Thank you!
Hello!” With huge grins on our faces we wave back wildly. Women wearing
traditional, colourful, long woven skirts lay long bamboo leaves on the road
shoulder to dry in the hot sun. They stop to stare and smile at us as we
rumble past, and we smile back.
We start winding higher in the hills and soon we are
looking across a vast mountain range so huge it touches the horizon and
continues beyond. Villages are literally perched on the cliffs and I wonder
how they just don’t tumble down the mountain side. Ahead of us a woman walks
along the road with a basket balanced perfectly on her head. We pass by her in
a cloud of red dust and I look back just in time to see her melt into the
bushes.
I am so awe struck by our surroundings I don’t even
notice the sun is climbing higher and higher in the sky and is passing over
into the afternoon. The road starts to get busier. More motorbikes are
whizzing past and the tiny roadside shacks which sell everything from bottled
water to cigarettes are becoming more numerous. I realize the journey is
almost over.
By the time the bus splutters into Luang Prabang I am so
stiff I can hardly climb down the ladder, my arms are so sore from waving I
can barely lift them, and my face is so sun and wind-burned it feels like it
will crack into a million pieces. But I can’t stop smiling!
We
passed small villages nestled near the mountain tops
I feel like I have been riding on top of the world, that I
have been witness to a land and people of awesome beauty that would not have
been possible from inside the bus. The view of this world through a dirty
glass window surrounded by the body heat and odours of fifty loud back-packers
can’t even compare to the experience we had.
On the roof we had a massive expanse of blue sky above our
heads, not a dirty, paint-peeled ceiling. If we stretched our fingers out far
enough we could almost touch the trees. When the women smiled and the children
waved they were doing so at us. We made eye contact. We communicated. We
experienced Laos, not just a bus ride.
I truly believe one should view the world from as many
angles as possible because each one lets you experience things you usually
wouldn’t otherwise. Now having experienced a small part of Laos from the
roof of a bus, in my travels I will always choose to ride on top.
