Glorious Road Trip

We hired the same van driver as yesterday to take us to Ponsavan, the next stop on our trip. First, before leaving Luang Prabhang, we visited the Royal Palace, which is now the national museum. As far as museums go, it was really kind of crap. However, as far as palaces go, it was really lovely... and I say that in the "laid-back, not ostentatious, not ribald, not garish, not needing to impress" kind of lovely. Aside from the throne room, it was a simple, open, airy, pleasant place which felt more like a large house than a palace.

After that, we were off. We took highway 13 south and immediately were swallowed up by some of the most insane roads, insanely gorgeous landscape I had ever seen. We were in the most mountainous country I personally have ever seen. We drove up and up and up thousands of feet, and then pretty much stayed up there for the entire trip to Ponsavan, with views that were awe-inspiring.

<-- Rick kickstarting the rainy season.

Also, I have to find out if there is a website where you can submit "the greatest drives on earth" because while there may be some stretches of Alpine motorway in which to have fun, I can't imagine a better place to take your sports car for a spin. First of all, the road surface is near-perfect. (If you are a communist country, you'd better be able to produce good roads, yes?) Rick and I marveled that such a small, poor country could produce such an amazing piece of road. (And that isn't to compare it to an American highway or anything... it's a two-lane asphalt road, but the terrain that it was carved through is the most ferocious on earth.) The curves and cutbacks and twists were amazing. I kept an eye out for about 30 minutes or so, thinking it would make a good point, and... no... I did not see one straight piece of road longer than 200 or 300 feet. It was that twisty.

Obviously, it was slow going: Our van kept to about 40 miles per hour on average... and that is not as the crow flies, of course.

One downside to the sports car scenario I mentioned above is the mountain-top hill tribe villages that this road passes through. Beautiful, hand-made, all-wooden villages built between the road on one side and a thousand-foot drop-off on the other. (Hundred-dollar houses with million dollar views, I commented.) Chickens, pigs, and cows wander in the road. Not a place for speeding. In fact, truly a place where you want to slow down and take a look because chances are, this is the kind of Asia you have been hoping to see.

Anyway, the trip to Ponsavan took 7 hours, which in truth was about 2 hours longer than I would have liked it to have been, but under no circumstances would I have missed the first 5 hours of endless visual rapture just because the last 2 hours were of the "are we there yet?" variety.