You really can't appreciate Asia without having the long bus ride experience. Asian buses are microcosms of human experience, if that isn't me waxing overly philosophical.
I'll give an example. Reactions and saving face are important in Asia, especially when a Lao man decides to sit next to you when there are plenty of open seats and you are trying to sprawl out and try to sleep on the ten hour ride. Being passive aggressive does little to help the situation - loud conversations, surreptitiously jostling the seat and sighing will do little to make the little man move. But without that minor annoyance, I might have missed some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen out of a moving vehicle in my entire life. Think: the blue ridge parkway, but with higher mountains, precarious turns with no railing, and entire villages built on steep hillsides. And pineapple farms everywhere. I love pineapples.
Northern Laos is an outdoorsy kind of place, even Vangvieng, which is essentially a backpacker party city. In it, you can go tubing down the river and stop at bars along the way, jumping off rope swings and generally making a fool of yourself because of the free Lao Lao. Unsurprisingly, there is a good reason why it is free. While you are floating, small children (who presumably are skipping school) pull you in from the rapids to your watering hole of choice and ask for money. It's the kind of place where you feel guilty even supporting the economy by having a beer because the average Lao makes less than the cost of a Beer Lao in a single day. But despite Laos being relatively undeveloped, it's got a friendlier spirit than most of the tourist spots in Thailand, where tuk tuk drivers will tell you to walk if you won't pay ten times the normal fare.
Since trekking is so expensive here, our next stop is Vietnam, which...wait for it...involves something like 30 hours of bus riding. Until next time!
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