So we were back in Bangkok, but this time, I welcomed the craziness because I knew we would only be there for 24 hours before we caught our night bus to Vientiane, Laos. Once we arrived from Burma, Nashy and I found a backpacker’s near Khao San Road to stay for the night, and Vic went to go check into her nice, 4-star hotel, and then we planned to meet up for a few drinks later that night. For dinner, we decided to eat street pad thai - after Burma, anything in Thailand would be even more delicious than before! We gave Vic a quick tour of Khao San Rd, and I watched the amazement in her eyes at seeing it for the first time. I think it is quite a sight for anyone to see - all of the bright lights, food vendors, and loud music (mostly Rihanna) that draws backpackers from all over the world. We shared a few drinks and then we planned to meet up again the next morning to go see the royal palace since Nashy and I had not been yet.
In the morning, I woke up early but Nashy was not feeling well. He was worried that he might have gotten food poisoning from the pad thai dinner, but I felt fine, so maybe it was something else. I planned to go meet Vic by myself, but I would come back and check on him after. It was a nice, hot day in Bangkok, but unfortunately since we were going into the royal palace, we had to cover ourselves from head to toe out of respect. This means I was sweating as Vic and I padded around the large complex that was packed full of other tourists. We had gone specifically to see the emerald Buddha that is housed at the palace, but it was disappointingly small, and we were uncomfortably hot in all of our clothes. Since Vic had gone to Wat Pho, but did not see the reclining Buddha and I had been there but lost all of the proof when my camera was stolen, we decided to quickly go again since it was right next door.
After glimpsing the large reclining Buddha, Vic and I caught a tuk tuk back to Khao San Rd to meet up with Nashy. Since we only had a few hours before we had to catch our bus that night, we decided to go get some final treatments (manicure, pedicure, waxing, etc) since it was so cheap in Thailand. Then we would go hang out by the pool at Vic’s hotel and relax until it was time to go. Nashy was still not feeling well, so he took a nap in one of Vic’s double beds while her and I grabbed some fruit shakes and lunch by the pool that overlooked all of Bangkok at her hotel. I had definitely been deprived by staying in hostels!
We stayed at the hotel as long as possible before we were worried that we might miss our bus, and then Nashy and I said bye to Vic and went downstairs to catch a tuk tuk to the bus station. One of the workers at the hotel helped negotiate a tuk tuk price for us from the hotel, and we were happy that we were on our way. However, as soon as we turned the corner, the tuk tuk driver demanded double what we had agreed on otherwise we would have to get out and find another ride! I was so ready to leave this crazy country where they feel that it is okay to treat people this way! He told us that we could pay our original price, only if we were willing to go see a gem shop so that he could make a commission from bringing us there. I was so annoyed - we did not have time to go look at gems! I told him what I thought about him as a person, and then Nashy and I got out and frantically started looking for a new ride. We were in a very busy intersection, so it was difficult to even get cabs or tuk tuks to stop for us, but we finally found someone who actually took us where we wanted to go for our agreed upon price.
All of the stress turned out to be unnecessary, because our bus was delayed and we waited over an hour at the bus station. When the bus arrived, Nashy and I claimed seats upstairs (it was double-decker but most people sit upstairs) and I tried to fall asleep once we were on the road. We must have been about 4 hours into our journey roughly when I was awoken by the bus swerving a little bit. I did not think much of it since the bus drivers in my experience were not the best drivers, and I tried to fall back asleep. However, not even ten minutes later, the bus swerved again, but this time, it made contact with the petrol tanker in front of it! And we hit it hard! (I cannot believe I am still alive to even tell this story but that is besides the point.) Since the bus was two-story and top heavy, the bus teetered a little bit but did not actually tip. But then, we made contact with a tree as the driver tried to regain control of the vehicle. The tree helped to bring us to a stop, and by that time, everyone was awake and none of us had any idea what to do!
Since the accident had occurred in the front of the bus, the door we would normally exit through was unaccessible, so we had to go out the emergency exit. While we were all still shocked that we had been involved in a bus accident, it started to smell like oil and gas on the bus, and we knew that we should exit for our safety. It was not panicked, but everyone quickly made their way out of the emergency exit, and by the time I got off, there were already police on the scene. I could not believe how the front of the bus looked - the accident was much more serious that I thought. The bus driver must have been hurt, but he was nowhere to be found. I could only think that he had probably fallen asleep at the wheel which explains how we could have gotten into the accident in the first place. Well, it turns out that after the accident happened, the driver just got out and ran, and the petrol tanker drove away. If I had not seen the front of the bus, I might think that the accident had never happened at all!
All of us stunned backpackers stood around the bus unsure of what to do next. Luckily, there was a woman who worked for the bus company on the bus with us, so she called in and asked them to bring us another one. Since we were about 4 hours out of Bangkok, it would take as long for them to send us another bus, so we were told to get comfortable and wait. We got all of our bags off of the bus, and then crossed the street to make a makeshift bed on the side of the freeway. I should mention that it was about 1AM at this time, and it was surprisingly cold for Thailand! As we watched, people came and towed away the bus, because it was blocking one entire lane and holding up traffic. I could only imagine what all of the people thought who drove by and saw all of us backpackers on the side of the road. And there were so many other buses that passed, doing the same route that we had been on, and I wondered why our luck had landed us on the one that would crash. I made a little bed sleeping on top of our luggage, and I actually managed to fall asleep, but then I was woken up because another bus had arrived to take us the rest of the way to Laos.
So our bus had been delayed and we had to wait for a few hours for a new bus, so we were late arriving into Vientiane. Nashy and I had only planned to stay in this small capital city for one night, so we tried to make the most of the time that we had there. Laos used to be a French territory, so Vientiane still has many French bakeries and influence. For lunch, we ate at a very cute French bakery, and for a moment, I forgot I was in SEA and thought I could possibly be in Europe.
I really liked Vientiane because it appeared to be manageable. In fact, I could probably say that about all of the places we went to in Laos. Even though Vientiane is the capital, it is quite small and quiet, unlike crazy Bangkok that we had finally managed to escape. After lunch, we hired a tuk tuk for the rest of the afternoon, and we decided to go see Buddha Park and the Laos version of the Arc de Triumph (again very French). The ride to Buddha Park in the tuk tuk was very interesting, and we saw a glimpse of the local people of Vientiane and their daily lives. Like many other SEA countries, it appeared that a lot of people just sit around. I feel like many of them do not think they can better their situation, so they are not even going to try, and it is sad. Or maybe I could be wrong, and they are just taking a break when I happen to see them, but chances are unlikely...
Buddha Park itself was interesting; there were lots of weird statues, and we took pictures with almost all of them. There was also this giant pumpkin-looking statue that we could climb up to the top, so of course we did! It was nearing sunset, so we went back to the tuk tuk and asked to be taken to the Arc de Triumph wannabe, and it was actually pretty impressive. Located in the middle of the city, it was quite striking to see, especially when it grew dark and it was alight with colorful lights.
Nashy was still not feeling well that night, so we went to dinner, but he pretty much just watched me eat. I was starting to worry that maybe he had caught something serious, and we were headed next to Vang Vieng where he would need to be full strength. If you have never heard of Vang Vieng, it is pretty much the Salt River on steroids. This means that it is a popular destination for backpackers, because you can tube down the river and party all day and night with other backpackers. I had heard stories from a lot of people who had been, and I was excited to see the craziness but also a little bit scared.
One of the things that I heard was that no one makes it all the way down the river, because you end up stopping at all of the bars alongside the river, and it grows dark before you have the chance. We were determined to make it down the river, but sadly, we never even got close. Before I get ahead of myself, Nashy and I were catching a small bus from Vientiane to Vang Vieng that would only take a few hours to get there. After our experience from the night before, we were a little bit wary about boarding another bus, but we felt some weird comfort when we saw a few of the people who had been on our bus the night before also boarding with us. Our new tactic with bus riding would be to sit as far back as possible in case anything like last night should happen again, so Nashy and I headed straight for the last possible seats. Even after our bad experience in Burma in the last row, we were not willing to take any chances of sitting any closer to the driver or windshield.
We would end up being glad that we sat where we did, because we met a group of people on that bus that we would end up hanging out with the entire time we were in Vang Vieng. There was this crazy group of Australian boys who were on a boys’ vacation, and they were ready to party. Back home, they all had professional jobs, but they were not going to let anything stand in their way of having a good time on their holiday. There was also a group of British girls (the ones from our bus the night before), an Australian couple, and 2 other Australian guys that would end up being a part of our group too. We ended up bonding on the bus, playing stupid games that would make the time pass faster. Our new friends learned about my motorbike accident and the bus accident, and they were a little worried that I might be cursed, so they were unsure about being so near to me.
The bus ride passed by quickly, and before we knew it, we were pulling into the bus station in Vang Vieng. Once again, we had just shown up without any prior booking of hotels, so we all planned to pile into a tuk tuk (and we fit nearly 15 people and our luggage!) and find rooms for all of us. We ended up finding a really nice hotel that actually had rooms available for pretty cheap, so we booked in there for a couple of nights. The rooms were really spacious, we had our own patio that overlooked Vang Vieng, and the beds were really comfortable. Nashy and I got a room with two beds, and the others got rooms just down the hall from ours.
We did not leave much time to get settled into our new home for the next few days, because we all wanted to go see the river that we had heard so much about. We shared another tuk tuk and made our way over to the river, but since it was so late in the afternoon, we were not planning to actually go swimming. Instead, we just went to the first couple of bars on the sides of the river and were in awe of everything that we saw. It was one of the craziest parties I had ever been to, and there were people in their bathing suits everywhere. Alcohol was served in buckets (with about 10 straws) and cost only a dollar or two! People had body paint and permanent marker all over, and everyone was wearing headbands or bracelets from the bars they had already been to. I was excited but nervous about the next couple of days that we would spend in Vang Vieng. It was clear that it would be easy to get into a lot of trouble here.
Well it turned out that we ended up going swimming that first day (good thing we were in our bathing suits! and we had bought waterproof bags for our id, money, cameras, etc.) because we all had to give the rope swings a try. I watched a few people with wonder as they swung back and forth high over the water and then dropped in. It did not even look like the river was deep enough in some parts for this! The water did not look particularly clean either, but rather it was a nice shade of dirty brown. That however did not stop me from also partaking in the madness. One of the British girls and I decided to do one of the rope swings together, and it was a mistake! Whereas we had been watching people swing back and forth on theirs, ours ended up being more like a flying fox or zipline. This meant that when we hung on all the way until the end, it hit the metal piece, throwing us off into painful backflips in the water. It felt like we had been in a car crash - that’s how bad the whiplash was! I decided then and there that I would never do one of the rope swings again, and I was lucky that I got out of that one with no lasting injuries! From then on, I was happy enough just to watch all of the other crazy people test their fate.
That night, everyone continued the party from the afternoon at the bars back in town. Drinks continued to be served by the bucket, and everyone was down to have a good time. There was even more face painting and craziness at night too! We met up with Dom and Laure that night, and our Koh Tao family was back together again! It was so good to see them!
The next day was my birthday, so we started out the “morning” with a big group brunch. I say “morning” because it was actually probably around 11AM before we had everyone organized for the day. Brunch was great with everyone, and we enjoyed some Friends on the TV while we fueled ourselves for the craziness of the day ahead. On this day, we decided that some of us would actually try tubing down the river, so we split our group into two. Half of the people went to go rent tubes, and the rest of us went directly to the river by tuk tuk. While we were waiting to leave, we added two more to our already crazy group - two American guys who had been teaching English in China. We planned to meet up with the others later, and made our way to the river.
This morning, we ran into a guy who had set the record for the most amount of days any one person had spent in Vang Vieng tubing. It was something crazy like 399 days! I could not imagine doing that for so long, and he was not exactly young either. Since it was my birthday, I decided to get “birthday girl” body painted on my stomach along with purple and white stars painted all the way down my legs. I received one of the biggest compliments of my life when Gibson (one of the resident body painters) said, “it is going to be hard to use the stencil on your stomach because it is so flat!” haha! I would later regret this excessive body painting, but at the time, I thought it looked pretty cool and I was getting free drinks because everyone now knew it was my birthday.
After a few buckets, we decided it would be fun to go tubing down the river and see how far we could get. After the first couple of bars, you could no longer reach them by land, but you had to be in the water. As you tubed past, someone working at the bar would throw you something to reel you in. Since we had not bought tubes, we decided to steal a couple, and we had to share to get us all down the river. It was really fun but also shallow, and we slowly made our way down. We stopped at a few bars along the way, but nothing was as memorable as Mud Bar. At this bar, we played some mud volleyball, and we watched some mud tug-of-war. Both of those were entertaining, but we found it even better to just grab handfuls of mud and just rub it on random people. I was so muddy, and I realized it was probably not such a good idea to wear a white bathing suit! (it still has not completely washed out!)
From Mud Bar, we kept tubing a little bit further down the river, but it was almost dusk, and we were getting a little cold. We decided to stop at a place called Family Bar, and we were the only ones there. It was great - we could dance and drink with just our group of friends. Well that’s what we did until Dom and I were dancing together, and I got just a little too close to the fire pit that was keeping us warm as we dried. I fell backwards into the fire, but was not even on it for more than three seconds before Dom pulled me out. Three seconds is all it took though for me to get pretty badly burned, and even though I could not feel the pain yet, I could see the damage. One of my legs had touched the metal piece that was around the fire, and this was the worst burn, but the others were still pretty bad even though they were just surface burns.
Someone who still had sense suggested that we go to the emergency room, so the owner of the bar rushed us there by tuk tuk. We all piled into the tuk tuk, and he drove like a madman to the hospital. When we got there, I still could not really feel the pain of the burns, so they did not give me any painkillers. I did not see any doctors around, and it did not really appear as if anyone knew what they were actually doing. I think my friends were actually telling the nurses what to do, and that is a scary thought! We posed for some pictures while we waited for the nurses to help me. The nurses did their best to clean my burns, and then they put some gauze and bandages all over my legs. They gave me some pain killers to take with me and some extra bandages since I would need to clean and change them over the next couple of days. I was bummed because I knew that I would no longer be able to go in the river (it was probably filled with diseases!), and I should probably be careful with exposing my burns to the sun. Not a good combination when you were at the river in sunny Laos...
Looking back, I wish I had known something about burn treatment before this happened to me, because then I probably could have saved myself a lot of pain. That night, I decided to keep going out, because it was my birthday! We met up with the others, and they were now fully convinced that I was cursed when they saw me all bandaged up. Steve (one of the Australian guys from Brisbane) decided to start a gang that night called Crazy Horse. In order to join, you had to kiss his hand when he held it up, and then he gave you your membership number. It sounds extremely stupid now, but at the time, it was really cool to see how many people he initiated over the next couple of days. I was member #16 I think... But when we were leaving, Nashy saw someone that had Crazy Horse #297 written on their arm in permanent marker! And earlier that day, I had overheard someone else trying to start a rival gang to Crazy Horse. It is so funny that this silliness even caught on! And when you are a member of Crazy Horse, whenever someone says “Crazy Horse!” you have to put your hand up like so, pretty cool, I know haha!
Throughout the night, I had a great time celebrating my birthday with all of my new friends, but I grew a little homesick and wished all of my family and best friends could have been there with me too. And then the itching started... As the burns were starting to heal and form new skin, it itched so badly that I started ripping off some of the bandages. Since the “doctors” at the hospital had put the gauze directly onto my burns, I was actually ripping off newly formed skin by doing this. That is when I realized that it was probably time for me to go home and go to bed.
The next morning was not any better though, and I once again tried ripping off the bandages so that I could shower and clean my wounds. I did not realize that you should not change the bandages very often when burns are healing or get them wet (another thing I wish I had already known), so I took one of the most painful showers of my life! Dom had come over and helped me re-bandage my legs, but I was just beginning to realize the severity of my injuries. The burns covered almost my entire right leg and hip which meant I had to sleep on my left side until they healed. And since I realized that I could no longer shower without getting them wet, I would have body paint on my legs for the next two weeks or so! I learned how to just wash my hair in the shower without getting anything else wet, and I had to sponge bath my body. It was tricky!
On this second crazy day in Vang Vieng, we learned about the phenomenon that are street sandwiches, and my life will never be the same. At many places around town (and even alongside the river) you can order sandwiches from these little stalls, and they make them right in front of you! My favorite was the chicken, bacon, and cheese, and I ordered many of them while in Vang Vieng.
For the third day, we went to the river again, but I was determined to be more careful and to take care of my burns. We had another great day, and this time no one got hurt! On this day, we found our new breakfast place, and the rapidly growing Crazy Horse took over the restaurant. They serve a lot of Western food in Laos, but it was kind of nice to be eating pizza and sandwiches while watching Family Guy. Since there were now so many of us, ordering, eating, and paying for breakfast took a couple of hours, so we had another late start on the river. That night, Nashy, Laure, and I went back to our room and planned to take a nap before going out for the night. Well none of us woke up from the nap until the next morning, but we all deserved the much-needed rest! I forgot to mention though that on this day, someone else besides me got injured! On the tuk tuk ride back from the river, one of the Australian guys named Jamie (who is actually a lawyer back home) had been riding on top of the tuk tuk because there were so many people piled in. I am not really sure why, but he decided to stand up when the tuk tuk was rounding a corner, and he fell off and landed on his head on the pavement. We convinced him that he had to go to the emergency room, and he did not end up having a concussion, but the whole thing was really bad. That being said, Jamie was out the next day on the river, sporting an enormous bruise on his head! Nothing can stop the partying in Vang Vieng it looked like.
Our fourth and last day in Vang Vieng was Australia Day, and since I was with mostly Australians, I became an honorary Aussie for the day. We started with another massive breakfast at our new spot, and then we all headed out for the river. Nashy had still not recovered from whatever he had gotten in Thailand, so he decided to stay back at the restaurant and watch the entire 2nd season of Family Guy while we were at the river. We had booked an overnight bus for that night with Laure to go to Luang Prabang, Laos which is further north, so we made plans to meet him back at the hotel in time for the bus.
Australia Day was great fun, and there were so many Australians that it felt like I was not even in Asia. We celebrated until the sun went down, and then it was even harder than usual to find a tuk tuk back into town. Laure and I were not really concerned, but neither of us had any sense of what time it was. Well it turns out that it was a lot later than we thought, and I made it back to the hotel just in time for our bus! Laure had to go back to her hotel and get her bags though, so she was nowhere to be found. We finally found her, somewhere on the streets of Vang Vieng with her bags, and we said goodbye to the craziness of Vang Vieng. Our bus ended up just being a minivan, and the only passengers were Laure, Nashy, and I. It would deliver us in Luang Prabang in the middle of the night, but we had not pre-booked accommodation (as usual.) We thought we would just be able to go to a hostel or a coffee shop when we arrived until it was a normal hour. At some point in the middle of the night, we were woken up by our two drivers (not sure why they needed two) to tell us that we were in Luang Prabang at the bus station. After much discussion, we convinced them to drive us to a hostel nearby to see if we could get a room and some sleep for the night. The hostel that we had heard about from other people was fully booked, but the guy took pity on us since it was the middle of the night. He invited Laure, Nashy, and I to sleep in a room behind reception on the floor with some blankets. There was another employee of the hostel also sleeping in that room! Seeing that we really did not have any other options, we reluctantly agreed and curled up on the floor. We actually did not end up having to pay for this night, but I cannot say that I got much sleep either.
We only had the day together in Luang Prabang, because Nashy and I would be taking a bus and boat that night over to Chiangmai in the north of Thailand. We decided to go visit a nearby waterfall, and we hired a tuk tuk from our hostel to take us there. It was really beautiful with clear blue water, and I wished that I could go swimming. There was also randomly a bear sanctuary near the waterfall, and we watched the bears for awhile. When we got back to Luang Prabang, we walked around the small city and shopped a little bit in the market. We were on the quest to find some delicious sandwiches (we had gotten spoiled in Vang Vieng), but we could not find anything so we ended up settling for just sandwiches haha.
I was so sad to once again be saying goodbye to Laure, but something told me that this would not be goodbye for once and for all. We had not had long to spend in Laos, but Nashy and I both felt that we had seen a lot of different things and enjoyed our experience there. I had some more scars to add to my collection, and I vowed to be more careful and to take good care of my burns for the rest of our travels to ensure that they did not get infected. In only a few short days (after the north of Thailand), we would be going back to Australia, and I thought I could wait until then to see a proper doctor about the condition of my legs. It was a very painful lesson to learn (and on my birthday no less!), but dancing near fires while drinking is never a good idea!
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