Luang Prabang to Phuket by bus, flight

22 hours with no sleeping bus. No lights at the toilet and was smelling really bad. Hopefully i had bought some snacks and water because the bus did no stop for this until 19 hours later. Good thing is that drivers seemed friendly and could understand English.

The bus drivers were kind.

Very professional and attentive staff with safe driving. Stops were also quite pleasant. The only downside was that if the bus had been fully booked, we would have to share two people to a sleeping bed, which would have been uncomfortable.

First of all, there’s no information anywhere. We got to the bus stop at Luang Prabang and exchanged the voucher for the ticket. No problem there. At the Laos border though, the driver just started unloading our luggage without saying anything cause he spoke no English. Okay, quick google search helped us deduce where we were. Then we waited. And waited. And waited. No information anywhere. Three hours later a random lady shows up out of nowhere and demands our passports. We reluctantly gave in after persuasion on her part. She put us in a van, but apparently only 5 out of 8 passengers were guaranteed the bus to Chiang Mai. After we finally get to what is our 5th van to Chiang Mai, the driver decides to stop at a restaurant and decided it’s a 40 minute break for everyone. This is Asia, we don’t mind waiting or not being on time, but we would appreciate being notified of the intinerary beforehand and not waiting in the middle of nowhere with zero information.

Overall it was good, however we reached Chiang Mai 3 hours later than expected

Excellent!

We used Naga Travel for a 24 hour bus ride from Luang Prabang to Kunming. The ride itself was fine. The bus was slightly more modern than what we expected based on the pictures. We had short bathroom breaks every 2.5 hours with 3 longer breaks (20 min, 30 min and 3 hours in the middle of the night). Ticket pickup should be better explained. Naga Travel does not have an office in Luang Prabang. The company called Naga Travel Express is another travel agency. Tickets can only be picked up directly at the bus station ticket office.