2 DAYS Of Travel HELL To Extreme Northern Laos 🇱🇦

We wanted to go from Nong khiaw to Phongsaly in extreme northern Laos and the only was to do this was spend 2 whole days travelling on local buses.

The first leg we got the bus from Nong Khiaw to Oudomxay at 10AM which cost us 80,000 Lao kip each and took around 4 hours on awful windy mountain roads.

We arrived in Oudomxay and headed straight across the road to find a hotel, we bagged ourselves a room for 100,000 lao kip per night which is a cracking price.

I give you all a little room tour of our luxury $6 hotel here in Oudomxay including the dreaded squat toilet.

We got some Thai baht changed into Laos kip as we had no money then we sat in a coffee shop next to the petrol station for the afternoon. Drank good lao coffee, drank Phongsaly Green tea and just watched the world go by.

The next morning was the big travel day so we grabbed some meat and sticky rice from the bus station grills - I genuinely had the best Sai oua Lao sausage of the whole trip here believe it or not.

We also grabbed some condensed milk sandwiches, 10,000 Lao kip for 3 and they were surprisingly tasty.

Time to board the Phongsaly Express. The local bus from Oudomxay to Phongsaly costs 150,000 Lao kip and supposedly leaves once a day at 9:30 AM and takes 8 hours. In our case we left at 11:30 AM and it took forever it was absolute hell.

I've never seen a bus stop so much, from roadside meat shopping and storing it all in the warm overhead lockers for 8 hours to pulling over for beers including the driver.

Eventually we hit halfway and had a lunch break, the views here were gorgeous and well deserved, the toilets however Holy moly they were bad.

After hours and hours of constant winding on the mountain roads of death we all had to get off the bus and change to a minivan to do the last hour and a half of the drive in the pitch black on another road of death.

We arrived super late and the bus station was deserted, was so so cold like 6 degrees celcius, a super drunk man offered to take us to town on little stools in the back of his truck for a ridiculous fee, we caved in and needed sleep so off we went.

Finally we arrived at our hotel in Phongsaly, I show you our 100,000 lao kip room and we get to sleep in the freezing room!

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Camera Used: Sony FDR X3000

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0:00 2 Whole Days Of Travel Ahead...
2:11 Local Bus Nong Khiaw - Oudomxay
3:54 $6 Luxury Hotel Tour Oudomxay
6:19 Can You Change Thai Baht?
7:30 Lao Coffee & People Watching
10:39 Street Grill Meat Shopping
12:46 Condensed Milk Sandwiches?!
14:06 The Phongsaly Express!
16:26 Local Bus Oudomxay - Phongsaly
18:59 Lunch Break & Toilet Review
19:55 Super Sour Snack
22:30 Swapping Bus?
23:30 Arrived In The Dark, No Taxis
24:09 Back Of A Drunk Locals Truck
25:25 Made It To Phongsaly! $6 Hotel Tour