Down at the little truck yard in Phongsali, we were fruitlessly searching for the truck for the eight-hour haul to Udomxai! Every driver told me he was going to Hat Sa! Where were all these trucks when Annetta and I were stuck there overnight trying to get to Phongsali?! There was a truck going to Udomxai camouflaged blue amongst the other blue trucks and we were on our way at 8am.
The initial hour was really stunning. Clouds had settled low in the valleys and the hilltops poked through like islands in a cotton wool sea. It was a beautiful scene but one I couldn't get a good photo of from the moving truck. We picked up a comedian a short time later! A very drunk old man who sat on the spare wheel on the floor behind the driver's cab. Every time the driver stopped to let someone on or off, he'd make his way to the back of the truck as if to get off, lose his balance as the truck started off again and stumble back to his spare wheel laughing like the rest of us! He managed to get off after about two hours! This trip was quite a tough one, as it rained for more than half of the journey. The plastic side panels had to be let down to stop us all from getting soaked, but also it obscured the views.
At a village called Ban Buntai, three hours from Phongsali, there are two small guesthouses, so there is a possibility of breaking up this long trip, although the area looked fairly unremarkable. This trip was the first leg in my dash down to Vientiane and the Thai border. I'd be travelling all day every day over the next three days, so I hoped, the further south I got, the better the roads would be, as my bum would have no chance to recover otherwise!