Stranded in Laos

Laos was so beautiful ! It was a planned 5 days trip from Vientiane to Luang Prabang and then back to Vientiane (and if I am rajin enough soon, I will write about it hehe) but I Luang Prabang is so beautiful !! 

Here's a sneak peek... 

Anyways, we had a flight to catch on the 27th at 9AM. It'll take us about 8 hours to get to Vientiane from Luang Prabang so we left on the 26th at about 5PM estimating to arrive at the airport way ahead before time. Having to go through the hilly mountains which made most of us car sick (my sister mostly, which surprised me cause usually I'm the one who gets car sick easily), it took up a little extra time for our journey but our driver was driving like Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift , drifting through the mountains which I felt was super dangerous so I literally went like "Okay, you better sleep your worry off now or you can just continue your next 7 hour journey just going like Bismillah, Bismillah throughout the way", and so I decided to sleep. 

Then when I woke up, I suddenly saw we had a few other local passengers and thought that "ah, okay, its cool, as long as my family gets enough space to sleep hehehe". We had a pit stop at about 10PM for a dinner at an RnR - which doesn't really look like the RnR in Malaysia but they had food so it was definitely good news ! (Although the only thing we could eat was their fried rice as usual because their soup was made with pork broth, gahhhh how I love soups but pork? Errr, no)

Then we left again, and I fell asleep the moment we got into the mini van. I was so soundly asleep that the next time I woke up, it was already 2AM !

I looked outside and saw lights beaming through our windows, my mum sleeping on the whole back seat row and realized, that our mini van stopped moving !! Okay to be honest, I was sleeping so soundly but I woke up because I dreamt of someone dying, which I freaked out like crazy especially with the scene I woke up to !

I woke my mum up (just to make sure everything was okay), and she said apparently we've been stuck for about 2 hours and there was a road accident. Our driver came in with torchlights and telling me, "Accident ! You, go, see !" Back in my head I was like, "HELL NO, I'm not gonna go out into the jungles at 3AM just to witness an accident when I just woke up from a nightmare and leave my family sleeping in the van". So, I tried to calm myself down by sleeping back *which is my cure to almost everything* and believe it or not, I dreamt of death again. Okay, I know, I sound so dark now heh but its not like I asked for it ! 

Then I was woken up by my mum's panic voice at about 7AM, wondering what was going on?! The whole family just realised that the other 3 local passengers have left the van and crossed to the other side of the accident trying to find a way to the other side or the closest town. My mum was busy asking the driver why didn't he wake us up, but with language barriers, he could only answer, "You sleep, sleep, sleep!" Well, to me, that's what my mum usually say to me whenever I wake up after 9AM so I quite understood what he meant from there haha

My dad, being the Engineer, went to investigate the accident and tried to solve it but not having to explain it to the locals, he explained it to us on how the tractor should be coming and etc *but me and my sister couldn't do anything but to listen, obviously*

Although the view was beautiful, I couldn't bear the idea of waiting any longer without having food or shower etc.... My parents flipped because we were about to miss our FLIGHT !! We were only 2 hours away to our boarding time and there were still atleast about 5 hours journey left to Vientiane. 

I crossed to the other side of the accident to see if there was any other way for us to get to the nearest small town or atleast somewhere with a toilet ! I was trying my best to avoid using the nature as my toilet 

Only did I come to realize that these road accidents seemed pretty normal to the locals. They would just take out their mat and sleep on the roads, take a bath at the nearest river and just chill. Me and my dad could even hear a chicken doing the usual morning *cuckadoodledoo!*

So,  I convinced the family that we should get to the other side of the accident and convince drivers who were stuck coming from Vientiane heading towards Luang Prabang, to bring us to Vientiane, but we only managed to get to the nearest small village since we kinda got a bit tired going up hill especially with my parents' luggage

(no idea how my sister still managed to smile for this picture haha)

So, we hitched a ride which we obviously had to pay for cause nothing is free in Laos, in the back of this van which idk how to explain how it looks like besides looking like one of those van kandang kambing just cause I usually see people bringing kambing or lembu using these kinda vans haha. My dad was busy taking pictures and selfies of the scene, reminiscing his hitch hike days and I fell asleep right after this picture was taken.. (also, I had a bandanna on my head but sacrifised it when my sister was getting car sick and you know what happens then since there were no tissues in the minivan haha) 

And then, we got to another nearby village which was slightly bigger... and offered us a ride to Vientiane so we had to choose either one of these rides.... and we chose... 

The minivan of course ! It was faster but for the same price, so why not ?

So I slept again in the van hoping that the next time I wake up we would've arrived in Vientiane *trying to make the journey feel as short as possible than it already is*. And we arrived at 1PM! Wohoooo, congratulations, we missed our flight.... 

Funny part was that although we had to pay for our mini van, it was not legal so we were not dropped off at the proper bus stop and had to take a tuk tuk to the airport. Rushed to the airport and we were constantly searching for wifi, planning our next move. Either to buy a new airplane ticket back to home, or get a bus down to Malaysia, or book extra nights in Vientiane etc. My dad went straight to the AirAsia office and Alhamdulillah, we could catch the next flight to Malaysia under AirAsia for only an additional of 60USD per person !

Then when I asked when the next flight was, they mentioned it was the 29th! Omg, it was another 2 days that we had to stay in Vientiane.... So, we booked an affordable family room and the mattress was as hard as the floor was, and the aircond had just broken down, but you know, it's cool, because after all we've gone through the past 24 hours, the hotel room was definitely not the worst of it haha :)