Laos
Laos - The adventure of how we didn't plan ahead at all and that was really quite dumb.
Honestly Laos was our big "last trip together" and it was inspired by Liz and Tess's earlier trip to Laos which looked absolutely amazing. We were in Bali back in October when they were in Laos and their trip was so good looking that I was even low key jealous from Bali which is absolutely a beautiful and amazing destination. So we thought Laos would be "easy, beautiful, accessible" yeah no.
We didn't plan ahead for shit.
Which is especially dumb when you consider that we were seasoned travelers and should've known better. So me and Jacey, Anna, and Felix got to Laos a day before Gaston. We took a night bus to the Thai Laos border then had to get across the border okay fine, then we took a 5 hour bus from the border city Vientiane to Vang Vieng down the most bumpy terrifying roads of my life. Okay cool, so then we got there and it was late afternoon and way too late to actually do anything. So we tried to really last minute book a sunset hot air balloon ride, they said yes and started to take us there but then got "new information" and cancelled on us so we rescheduled for the morning.
We also had to deal with Gaston coming a day later. Jacey and I had to leave a day before everyone else so we tried to plan a schedule of hot air balloon, drunken intertubing, and visiting this absolutely beautiful waterfall. I'll get to all of that.
So that first night we paid 30,000 kip (8,333 kip to a dollar) to go to this "awesome jungle party" which turned out to be boring and shit so we just kinda went to bed. It was also an obvious ruse and tourist trap so we just went home. Actually let me rephrase that, Jacey and I went home so we could make it to the waterfall in the morning, I have no clue when Anna and Felix got home but I'm assuming late. So the taxi back was supposed to be included and free but what do you know they wanted money so we just started walking (no internet no clue where we were and I'm sure it was over a mile or two back) and then a random guy in the back of a truck was like oh do you want a ride back? and so we just got back in the back of this truck with some random guy with sub-par english and went... We were standing in the back and the guy was randomly singing and I was low key afraid for our lives... We made it home safely though and they were really kind. Okay one night down..
The next day Jacey and I got up really early to go see the waterfall, paid like a lot of Kip to get there and spent 2 hours in the back of a truck (tuktuk/taxi thing) in the WORST roads of my life. Literally hurt to sit back so we were really uncomfortable, only to find out that we were at the wrong place and the waterfall we wanted was actually outside of the next town.... So we then spent 2 hours coming BACK on the worst roads of my life.
We met with the rest of the group and Gaston arrived and we all took off to go intertubing down the river which had many river stop bars that you could drink at. We were a bit late, most people start at 11 but we were late due to Gastons bus arriving in the morning and he thought he could immediately come to see us as well but actually he missed the last bus out to us so he stayed the night at the border then came to meet us so we were late with him. The intertubing was actually great fun, we were running around swimming, drinking at the bars, getting caught up, having water fights it was all good fun. We had some great sandwiches at the last bar as well but due to our late timing the sun was already setting and we needed to get out of the water as there was also a HUGE lightning storm looming. Well something that happened is that everyone paid like 60,000 kip deposit for their intertube but somehow we lost track of them and a lot of people not in our group theirs popped. So at the last place when we noticed this Anna and Gaston got all determined and rounded up 5 for our group which we puppy guarded pretty hard.
Anyway around the end of the night there was us and these two drunk guys a dude a girl. They had been with a bigger group earlier and were now just them. He was reasonably drunk and she was shwasted. She came over earlier and tried to take our intertubes and I was like yeah no back off so she left. They came back again and really started getting hostile with us like oh those are ours, how come ours are gone, we were 5 and we have 5 intertubes and now they're gone but you have 5 intertubes so you must have stolen ours. Yeah, No. We were not about to let that happen. He tried to buy one off of us as well for the two of them to share (and for more than the deposit so it would've been worth it and she was an awful human being so I almost considered it) but I turned them down because of the darkness and the storm. She got really mad, kept trying to step around us and grab at our intertubes getting angrier every minute, calling us names, using awful drunk logic about how they were hers. Yeah again. No. Thankfully we grouped up pretty well and Gaston and his godlike customer service voice tried to persuade them to leave. It got to the point that I had to physically use my arm to block her from reaching at our intertubes. Nothing crazy just used my forearm, didn't like grab her or anything but this girl was crazy. Anyway we left with our intertubes and I was pretty annoyed but we saved their lives not letting them take an intertube from us and go down the river that drunk in the pitch black. Idk exactly where they went but we got the last taxi back and I think they had to walk back. I'm hoping that sobered them up and she realized what pain she was and how we had done them a favor...
Anyway that night we went for some "happy pizza" and that ended up being a bad idea as it landed one of us in the hospital the next day stuck in their native language (couldn't find their way back to english).
Jacey puked all over her bunk at the hostel (and down to the bunk below her much to that girls dismay) and there was another guy in our room who had a motorcycle accident earlier in the week and his bandages had bonded to the new healing skin. Anyway as one of the only sober people I was running around putting out fires that night...
The next day Jacey and I were supposed to make it home but I left my passport in Anna's lock box at the hostel because mine was broken when we got there. I totally forgot about it when we left because I was still taking care of Jacey. Getting her back to the border on that 5 hour bus I was so afraid she was going to puke. We didn't have a bag and neither did the driver so I actually asked passengers for bags until someone gave me one. She held on to that for dear life which scared me until the same guy who gave us the bag came to us and said "heres a pill... for her head" we had a slight language barrier. So without thinking I just gave it to Jacey and was like "yeah here take this" which she did completely obediently (bless her). It wasn't until like 10 minutes later that I was like "I have no clue what the hell I just fed Jacey" oops. Well anyway it knocked her out so it was a good thing and she woke up refreshed on the other end of that awful bus. I asked the guy later and it ended up being something super normal like asprin or something just not a pill form I recognized.
Anyway we made it to our bus terminal to back to Bangkok and I reached down for my passport and realized where it was. As we were about to get up to get on the bus I just turned to Jacey and said "I don't have my passport, you're getting on that bus and I'm staying here the night" That was a pain. Sending her alone (still not feeling stellar) and missing the bus... We were leaving a day earlier because we had back to back presentations in class in 2 days and wanted a day at home to work on them... Well I had to contact both my groups, tell them what was up, then contact Anna, Felix, and Gaston and coordinate going home with them the next day. I couldn't book another bus home because that would've taken too long so I booked a last minute flight with them and booked a hostel on the same street as the travel agency.
Anyway we made it home in the end, I got home around 1am and then had two presentations the next day... And thats the story of how we totally messed up Laos our last trip. Its funny looking back but the whole trip was kind of a pain in the ass...
Anyway here's some pretty pictures of the country side and don't get me wrong its a beautiful country and we could've done it much better but oh well, you live and you learn. I promise the next posts will be much livelier haha.
