Live, Laugh, Love, Laos 🇱🇦

And then there was one…!!! (for 5 days lol) 😭 🇹🇭 

After 103 days of being inseparable, Sam left me in the city where it all began 😭 He found a cheap flight from Bangkok to go home for his grandad’s funeral so I ventured to Northern Thailand’s Chiang Mai and Pai since we had yet to visit there. Sam and I said goodbye as my tuk-tuk drove off and I was officially on my own 😟. I managed to book a night bus to Chiang Mai (my first night bus!) where I had a comfortable sleep and arrived at 6 a.m. the next morning.

I decided to lean into the ~solo travel lifestyle~ and booked my first-ever dorm room hostel, which was actually surprisingly nice. The hostel was modern, clean, and felt like a Tulum villa! I must admit, I was definitely nervous being on my own but was quickly put at ease when I met other travelers who arrived at the hostel with me and were SO friendly. I met my bunkmates, Collin (from Ireland) and Dosha (from the Netherlands), who immediately invited me to join them for a jungle party later that night (couldn’t resist that!) and became my friends for the next 5 days.

Solo travel is way more common than I expected. Most people are in their mid-twenties and are between jobs, on sabbaticals, or saved enough money for 3-6 months’ worth of travel. It made me realize we’ve been in such an American bubble thinking that we “can’t afford” or “don’t have the time” to travel. People make it work, especially on the cheap, saving a few grand and traveling for a few months at a time. Solo travelers tend to band together for a few days/ weeks if they are planning on going to the same places so it’s nice to be surrounded by familiar faces and make friendships that go beyond the classic small talk travel convos. Also, the majority of solo travelers are girls! Everyone agrees it feels super safe and is a great way to see the world if people can’t join you.

One highlight of my trip to Chiang Mai was a cooking class I had found on TikTok that was SO FUN. The teachers were so unhinged, and inappropriate at times, referring to spice levels as sexiness levels (I was the sexiest in the class lol), twerking while stir-frying and feeding into stereotypes about the group’s home countries. We cooked 5 dishes over the span of 5 hours in a gorgeous outdoor kitchen. It was the perfect evening activity that I recommend everyone do when visiting Chiang Mai. Seriously, tell your friends to do Zab E Lee cooking school if anyone is going to Thailand for vacation.

I ventured with Dosha and new friends we met along the way to a backpacker town, Pai, which is a hippy-dippy place to relax, do yoga, meditate, and smoke weed (we actually did none of those things haha). Instead, we hung around town and celebrated our new friend, Nadine’s, 30th birthday! We ended up having a strong crew for the 5 days which consisted of Dutch, German, Irish, and Scottish friends. Rose (from Amsterdam) and Sam (from England) were on a similar route and headed to Laos next so we’ve traveled together for a few weeks now!

TLDR: Solo traveling removed any doubt in my mind that it’s extremely common and easy among Westerners to go out and travel for any period of time. It’s so common for people to take a short sabbatical or travel between jobs, I seriously encourage everyone to take the opportunity to do it. It’s not only young people, I’ve met so many people in their 30s doing the same thing!!

After my 5 day solo traveler adventures, Sam and I were able to reunite in Chiang Rai, Thailand to cross the border over to Laos for country number 6!

LAU IN LAOS (and Sam)!!! 🇱🇦🇱🇦🇱🇦

Fun Fact: Laos is pronounced like Lau (the ‘s’ is silent!!)

Laos feels like what we imagined Southeast Asia would be: CHEAP as hell. Finally, we’ve found a country where tall boy beers are $1, huge water bottles are 50 cents, and a meal will run you $1.50. We thought long were the days of “cheap” travel across Southeast Asia party due to inflation, but Laos is still affordable so travel there soon if you’re looking for a cheap holiday!

It may sound cheesy but the energy in Laos is magical. There’s something in the air in Laos- The people are so happy, not pushy, and live a simple life surrounded by green hills and rice paddy fields along the Mekong River.

When prepping for our world tour, I stumbled upon a 2-day slow boat trip that travels from the border of Thailand down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang, Laos. The Mekong is the longest river in Southeast Asia that runs from China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia & Vietnam, winding through rural areas and more commercialized ports along the way. I showed my mom a YouTube video of the slow boat adventure before we left and she since had recurring nightmares of me getting eaten by alligators on this boat (the water is a questionable murky brown but I can attest there are no alligators!!!).

We crossed the Thai-Loas border after taking 2 buses and two tuk-tuks to Huey Xai, a small town that has been set up to support travelers who need a base before the two-day adventure. We found a guesthouse for $8/night that wasn’t anything special but allowed us to rest and prepare for the journey.

Rose, Sam, and Ingrid’s (friends I met during my solo travels in Chiang Mai/Pai), timing lined up with ours to travel down the Mekong so we managed to be on the same slow boat and travel pretty much all of Laos together.

The thing about the backpacker route is everyone is doing the same thing (this was the main reason decided to go a little rouge and we opted for Sri Lanka/Borneo/ Taiwan). But after 3 months of traveling as a two-man, we wanted to lean into the backpacker experience (mixed dorm hostels and all!) to meet more people and give our decision fatigue a bit of a break! As I write this, I’m literally staring at a kid, Aidan from Australia, who was my bunkmate on my first night in Chiang Mai 9 days ago. I’ve run into him in Pai, then back at the Chiang Mai bus station, 4 days later at a bowling alley in Luang Prabang, and now 3 more days later on the train to Vang Vieng. It makes it super fun being with the same group of people for a few days though!

The boat itself isn’t anything special. It’s a wooden boat that resembles the Jungle Cruise ride from Disneyland. Half the seats are narrow benchers facing one another while the other half are car seats that have been ripped out of minivans and drilled into the ground. It’s a public boat that has been taken over by backpackers who want to slow down and enjoy the Mekong River while guzzling down tallboys of BeerLao and playing Uno for two days straight (and occasionally napping).

There were locals on the boat who used it as a way to commute, but they retreated to the back of the boat probably to avoid the nonsense of backpackers. Along the route, you really do see the slow rural life of villagers who live along the Mekong: elder women in rice paper hats fishing with bamboo and nets, little children bathing naked in the water, and water buffalo cooling down from the heat.

The first day takes you 7 hours down the river to a small town called Pak Beng, which is pretty much another town built up to support the slow boat travelers. When the boat pulls up to the Pak Beng port, a dozen guesthouse owners wait at the dock to lure travelers back to their accommodations for the night. The salesman Sam is, we rallied about 10 new friends from the boat and banded us together to negotiate the best deal in town. We managed to all get private rooms for $5/pp. Dee, our guesthouse owner, didn’t want to budge on the price but after we all grabbed our bags and started walking away mid-negotiations, he obliged. Strength in numbers!

Luang Prabang

After the second day on the boat, we arrived in Luang Prabang in the afternoon and needed to find accommodation. I randomly found a new hostel with two private rooms to house our new couple friends, Alene and Niall (from Belfast!), which ended up being an amazing hidden gem called, La Casa.

The guesthouse was newly opened by a Filipino family who takes hospitality to a new level. They host free family dinners every other night in addition to free breakfast cooked by my new bff, Keilli. They took us out to Luang Prabang’s only late-night “spot”- THE BOWLING ALLEY, which turned into a lit bar and felt like a sorority date function in the best way (think: Keg-erskating vibes 🛼 🍺 ). Nearly 100 backpackers pile into the bowling alley ripping shots, drinking beers, and smoking cigs inside while bowling barefoot and listening to top 40 music. It was so much fun. I was horrible at bowling and was having more fun dancing with Kailee who had me CACKLING at the dance moves where she used her flip flips as props (see below). P.S We’re going to visit their family in the Philippines in a few weeks now!!! 🙂 

Luang Prabang itself is a quiet but lovely town that has adorable French colonial buildings along the river. We honestly didn’t do much during the days other than sit at the pool and get massages, but it was much-needed rest after Sam’s jetlag and our long travel days.

One morning, however, I was baited by a tourist trap experience- Monk’s almsgiving (Sam input: I stayed in bed as I knew it was going to be a farce). Every morning at sunrise, nearly one hundred monks walk on a road downtown to accept alms from locals and tourists. Tiny stools are set up for tourists to hand out balls of sticky rice and packaged goods to the monks. We thought this would be a special, wholesome, authentic activity to do one morning but when we noticed tour buses of Chinese tourists occupy the entirety of the street, it ended up turning into a photo shoot of tourists taking pictures as they handed food to the monks (which had my jaw on the FLOOR!!!). And once they ran out of alms, they just got up and left, regardless that more monks were walking down the line! At the end of the craziness, I saw a few tourists eating sticky rice from a basket that monks had put aside to donate to an orphanage! It was one of the craziest things I’ve experienced and I couldn’t stop laughing from secondhand embarrassment (video below…!!).

The Chinese have invested a bunch of money into Laos - most notably they built a speed bullet train from Beijing to Vientiane (the capital of Laos) that has allowed tourists to travel northern Laos in luxury vs bumpy bus rides and hours-long travel. A bus ride from LP to Vang Vieng took our friends 8 hours while our train took just under 1 hour.

Vang Vieng 🌄 

We arrived at Vang Vieng, where backpackers spend most of their days on day trips hiking, swimming in blue lagoons, riding hot air balloons (the cheapest in the world!), and other extreme sports. The town itself is a little seedy and was WILD in its prime 10 years ago. Travelers came to Vang Vieng to party and experiment with EVERYTHING under the sun (Laos is known for its opium 😱 interpret as you want…). Now, it’s more subdued but still includes fun activities like Tipsy Tubing down the river and only one bar that allows for experimentation 🥴 .

We rallied our friends to go Tipsy Tubing on our final day in Vang Vieng and had a TIME; imagine 100 backpackers barreling down a river and stopping at various bars to guzzle buckets of mojitos along the way. As it gets rowdier and the sun sets, hot air balloons, zip lines, and paragliders fly above you as you float down the river a little tipsy (read: drunk hehe). It was like a college darty in the best way. haha Forever young at heart!

We are sad to leave Laos and feel like we haven’t done the country enough justice. There’s something so magical about Laos- the people are so kind, there’s no worry in the world here. This is hands-down one of our favorite countries in SE Asia and cannot wait to return to experience more rural life and nature. We’re currently on an unintentional 3-day travel journey across southern Laos to cross into Vietnam (no China train down here 😭) that consists of long bus rides and inconsistent bus schedules.

SAM HISTORY LOL

Sam was too busy having fun drinking BeerLaos and hanging with his new lad friends to write about the recent history of Laos. Here’s what he has to say:

SE Asia, America trying to stop communism in the ’60s, the opium trade, secret wars, and secret bombings. Laos is the most bombed country in the history of the world, with an estimated 2 million bombs being dropped here over 7 years during the CIA’s ‘secret war’. Many of those bombs never detonated and are still been found, and subsequently blowing up, all over the Laos countryside every day. This article does a pretty good job going into more detail for anyone interested https://www.history.com/news/laos-most-bombed-country-vietnam-war