I'm on my way overland to Beijing. I spent yesterday on a bus, and yesterday night on a train. I get on another train tonight. I'm in Bangkok now, and tomorrow morning I'll be in Vientiane. I get my second Chinese visa and then it's a bus for probably two days until I get to Kunming, China. In Kunming I get on a train for two days to Beijing.
The worst part about Laos is the absence of trains. I can't believe anyone would willingly take a bus in Asia when a train is available. Even sleeping next to a smashed cockroach exoskeleton in the overheated top-shelf coffin on the tracks between Hanoi and Hue was better than your average bus ride.
Bus drivers in SE Asia honk incessantly at absolutely anything animate in the road ahead of them. Awful local pop music blares out of speakers that you have no control over, and if you're extra unlucky, they also play the horrific videos that go with the songs and you can't pull your eyes away. Don't ever count on getting sleep on a bus.
When you corner, inevitably at too high a speed, you slide in your narrow plastic seat and slip over the armrest. For some reason, buses are extra rattly on what seem like decent roads. I don't know about other people, but when I sit too long my shins start hurting just below the kneecap. It doesn't make any sense to me, but it happens nonetheless.
Long distance trains, on the other hand, do not honk at all or corner too fast. They don't stop every ten minutes to pick up more people - in fact, traffic stops for them - and you will never slide out of your bunk or seat.
I'm not going to say I sleep great on trains. I usually can't get to bed too early, and wind up only getting really great sleep just before I have to wake up in the morning, but I can still sleep a bit, and at the very least laying on a mattress in my own berth with my legs stretched out is heaven enough.
It's no contest for me. I took one sleeper bus into China, and woke up in a multi-mile traffic jam with a Mongolian playing cards on my lap because my bunk location made for a good table. I'm gonna have to take a sleeping bus through Laos to get to the border, thank god drugs are so easy to come by there. I've talked to people that have just gotten off such buses in Laos and have nothing good to say about them. Some girls even said they got shoved into a multi-person bunk with a stranger.
I'll deal with it of course, but I'm going to be looking forward to getting on the train for two days once I get to Kunming, enjoying my personal space, the smooth ride and gentle rocking, the restaurant car with cold beer, and something at the end of the line worth traveling to.
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