Everything looks like an adventure when you’re in Laos.

Nestled comfortably between Southeast Asian heavyweights Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia, Laos is a landlocked gem that beckons the unhurried soul. Here, time moves a little slower and life takes on a different cadence – and if you have a heart for slow exploration, the simplicity of its existence will not be lost on you. There are few rules, even fewer inhibitions; and the payoff is all the stories you get to tell on your way home. Things you should have done but didn’t; things you shouldn’t be doing but did. Things that were questionably legal, or straight out illegal; or stupid, or ill-advised, or perhaps just downright bad.

The truth is, no one goes to Laos and not make a terrible decision at one point of time or another… and for me, it was the moment I decided to rent out a motorbike for a couple of hours to roam the city – even as I had neither license nor experience operating any kind of vehicle on the road in my entire life, ever.

Fuelled by the promise of unrestricted freedom, I simply swung by the nearest rental shop, chose a dusty worn-out bike from a line-up of even more dusty worn-out bikes, pretended I knew how to work the thing, paid, and then sped off. They didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell. All they required was that the safety helmet be worn at all times on bike. And so I winged everything, from road signals and traffic signs to directions and routes – and just to lend a little more context to the situation, the year was 2014; a time where, even though Google Maps and Handphones and Autoroaming were inventions well in existence, they weren’t as ubiquitous the way they are now. Meaning: I neither signed up for Autoroam nor picked up a local SIM card; and was basically uncontactable, unable to contact, and navigated my location by simply remembering all the roads I took. Not that it was much of a problem – at least, not at the beginning anyway. It wasn’t like I was seeking out a specific destination; rather, I intended only to roam, and to enjoy the experience of navigating the backwaters of Luang Prabang on bike, with no plan in mind.

And so it was not much of a problem… until, it was.

You see, youth, with its cloak of carefree invincibility, shields one from the weight of care or consequence. When I’d chosen my bike back in the shop earlier that day, I’d noticed the gas indicator pointing to an almost-empty – but, I’d also chosen to ignore it because, like seriously, which self-respecting bike rental company passes you a vehicle that would sputter to a stop thirty minutes into your ride???

Instead of taking the meter for what it was, I resolved that a better decision was to believe that the indicator was faulty (not sure how I thought that could have been any better); and so, stuck by my choice of that dusty ol’ bike with its dusty dashboard and that dusty little red pointer flickering treacherously towards an empty.

🙂🙃

And that, is exactly how I found myself sputtering to a stop some thirty minutes later, far away enough from the city centre to be in the boonies, and far enough into the boonies to be at the kind of place where just one car or bike passes you once every thirty minutes or so.

I had two choices that afternoon: One, to spend the next two hours or so retracing my route all the way back where I started, all while wheeling a heavy motorbike alongside on foot – or two, wait and pray that some kind person will pass by soon enough and somehow, miraculously be able to spot my distress while whizzing by and decide to stop and help.

Naturally, I chose to get off my bike… and push forward. Yes. No clue where I was, no clue what laid ahead; and there and then I decided to myself, that seems sound.

To refresh the scene, I had made it out of rural Luang Prabang, to an even more rural, timeworn part of Luang Prabang. I was on the kind of old dirt road people take en route to waterfalls nestled neck-deep in jungles. In fact, I’d ended up here precisely because some minutes earlier, I’d seen some weather-beaten sign pointed this way for a waterfall and decided on a whim to follow it. Around me there was only grass, and trees, and the road I treaded – not even a dilapidated structure to hint of civilisation… and I took this all in and thought to myself, let’s move ahead.

The stillness I felt that afternoon was punctuated only by the crunch of gravel beneath my feet, and the wheels of my now companion-in-intertia in tow. It went on like this for minutes – ten minutes, to be precise- just me and the dusty old bike, rolling, walking; rolling. Walking. Until, in the heart of my current reality that is the wilderness, where those ten minutes had already stretched itself as far out as the expanse of my unknown, an unexpected sight materialized out of nowhere like a mirage in a desertstorm: a small, rickety lone outpost; with paint peeling and lights flickering and a frame so fragile I wondered if it’d hold up for enough seconds until I got there.

Life! was the first thought that crossed my mind. Never mind that it was the kind of place I’d have expected to died at if this were The Hills Have Eyes; dilapidated and beckoning like a sentinel of horror stories untold. Regardless, approaching it felt like stepping into a dream; and as I closed the gap between me and this outpost and started to gain more visibility to its structure, I realized that this outpost wasn’t just somebody’s living quarters as I’d originally thought, but an actual, functioning, station.

An actual, functioning, gas station, to be exact.

?????????!!!!!

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If you want to know the value of one-hundredth of a second, ask the athlete who won a silver medal in the Olympics.

If you want to know the value of one second, ask the person who just escaped death in a car accident.

If you want to know the value of one minute, ask the person who just missed the bus.

And if you want to know the value of ten minutes, ask the person who had to push a full-size motorbike down an old dirt road in a completely foreign land- all while grappling with the uncertainty of what laid – or did not lay- ahead.

I MADE THIS MISTAKE SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO

Luck favours the audacious? No, luck favours the stupid. Looking back at this today, with ten full years of distance in between, I realize now just how badly that day could have been. The gas station could have been hours away – or worse, there could have been no gas station. I could have walked on and on only to end up lost. I could have scratched up or even damaged the bike in ways I could not afford to recompensate. I could have been robbed. I could have not make it back.

I might have relied blindly on serendipity for survival back then and it came through- but I sure am not going to recommend it as a blueprint for travelling today. As such, if you ever find yourself in this part of the world some day- or any part of the world, in fact- where you have to rent a dusty old bike from a dusty little shop on the corner of a dusty little street, keep these things in mind:

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Don’t make these mistakes; I already did.