Wingwang do dad to Odomxai

Leaving the town, of which name I don't recall, epitomises South East Asian public transport. Arrive at bus station (Huh! small wooden hutt on roadside with usual ignorant attendant) at 8am in the pouring monsoonal rain. Speak to ningnong behind makeshift table about departure time of bus (Huh! and Huh again!) A bus is actually a converted Ute with bench seat down either side. A shabby bit of plastic, over a metal frame is considered a roof. Some leaky plastic sides and lack of suspention. Fill it to the hilt with people, chickens and an arrangement of smelly dead stuff and then call it a bus.
The "bus" leaves when it is full. This means to and beyond capacity and at what ever time the "bus" driver decides. At 11:30 am we all pile ( Me, Mike, 4 older Italians, 2 younger Gremans and a partridge in a pear tree) in to the back of our leaky,cold and very uncomfortable road machine. A few kilometers down the road and a slight bit closer to our destination, we swiftly come to a hault, then turn around. Mamma mia! This was the cry from the usual suspects and a little whimper from me. We head back to the "Bus station" to pick up one skinny whizzened old man and a bunch of other cargo. We thought, as we headed again towards our destintaion, we were back on track. Untill he took a sharp turn down a muddy track. We picked up another 4 passengers, who had to sit in behind the Driver and his passenger. Oh and one very scared looking chicken. She went on the roof.
Finally and without further adue, we set off for Udonxai but not after a bit of mutterings from the Italians.
Up a few hills the Bus started splattering and chugging till it came to a hult on a hillside. A good Loo stop I thought. A good time to patch together the broken radiator too. A bit of tinkering and a few more mutterings from the Italian, we were on the road again. Only to be gassed out by the ferocious fumes expelling out the back of the bomb we were intombed in. A bit of handing out of bandanas and a few faces buried in to T-shirts, we were well covered from inhailing too many fumes. Well not enough for us to enter into a suicide pact anyway. Looking around we all realised we looked like a pack of hoodwinked criminals and broke into exhusted fits of the giggles. The day was going from bad to worse and this was our little bit of relief. After gaining composure and a full pelt of rain things just seemed to be more and more grim. Our driver was driving at a ferocious rate around mountain bends, throwing us from seat to seat. The rain was coming so hard that it was making it way in through the flimsy plastic walls and drenching me to my underware. The fumes were killing us slowly and we seemed to be constantly stopping. If we ever made it to our destination it was going to be through devine intervention.