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A TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow of a travel blog to Luang Prabang, Lao Peoples Dem Rep by TravelPod blogger Foolsgold titled “Worst Luck” Foolsgold’s travel blog entry: “”It’s this whole other country” — Forrest Gump Laos…. country number 16 on our fair trip around the world. Another language, currency, culture, horrible road network and method of going to the toilet. We left China first thing in the morning and decided to walk across the kilometre or so of no-man’s-land between the countries. The landscape had been changing slowly as we wound our way south of Kunming, and long before we reached the border we found ourselves in South East Asia Proper – jungle, palms trees, opressive heat, spiders as big as your hand, the lot. We entered Laos and were immediatly struck by how lovely everyone was. The customs officials were playing Petanque, our first taste of the colonial French legacy. We bumped into Alex the Russian, who we had met briefly in Kunming, and a Swiss guy called Fred, who were waiting for a bus to Luang Prabang. We thought we’d join in. After all, I remarked, it’s only a hundred miles – even in the worst bus on the worst roads with the worst luck it can’t take more than three hours. We’ll be there by late afternoon. Fourteen hours later, at four in the morning the next day, we got off the bus in our new home. Dropped rather unceramoniously at a dark bus station two kilometres out of town we had to walk, bang on the door of a few guesthouses and then find …
