LAOS - where it began

The seed of the idea that germinated and established itself into a monstrous, grotesque comphor laurel came from a now redundant BA that I worked with 18 months ago. We were discussing my then pending trip to Vietnam and Cambodia when he mentioned an almost mythical, Apocolypse Now type of place that existed somewhere in the midst of their next door neighbour Laos. He made mention of river side bamboo bars, ridiculous swings, slides, endless parties and forgotten days. Needless to say, whilst the name of the guy remains lost to me for eternity, the idea remained and it was passed on to my travelling partner in crime, JC to investigate. We did find out via some well constructed YouTube and Google searches that the port of 'endless dreams' was Vang Vieng, basically a backpacker's pit stop, known for it's tubing and extra curricular activities, please see 'happy pizza' for ease of reference. In any case, there it was, the idea of Laos hatched in our small minds, left for review at another date.

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So the months passed on by and the fondness of our trip to Vietnam and Cambodia resurfaced on occassion with discussions of perhaps some day soon making a return to that part of the world. Then, on one fateful September evening, with the air heavy with discussion of Air Asia X and their ridiculous deals that they apparently seemed to be offering to their down under cousins, we drank, reminisced, drank some more, reminisced and then decided to blow apart the fact from fiction by visiting the Air Asia site in order to discover the reality of fuel levies, taxes, pillow case surcharges, arm rest subsidies etc. Through our alcohol induced haze, faulty calculations and travel bravado we managed to plot a course that would get use from Sydney to Vientiane via Melbourne and Kuala Lumpur for a tick over $700 AUD - "Bullsh*t", right !? Well my friends no, the fiction was of course fact. With adventure in our hearts and tequila in our mind we booked Laos on a wing and a prayer, and thus was born our journey into the Land of a Millions elephants.

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I have got to say, from the time of booking I was a little apprehensive at the travelling party make up. Not so much that initially it was only three people but due to the fact that JC's attitude towards me over the previous months had really started to piss me off and I really didn't know if I could hang out another six months before taking off without wanting to break his neck. Hmmm, now that line wasn't particularly diplomatic now was it ? Needless to say, it was true. I'm not quite sure how it came to pass but I managed to sell JJ on the idea of of joining us for 'Laoescapades' and so it was that on the evening of 02-MAR-09 , JJ, JC, Audrey and myself met at the Sydney domestic terminal to commence a journey to a land where UXO's are part of common venacular.

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Sydney domestic

It commonly goes like this, JC prefers to get to a point of departure 15 hours prior to what a reasonable arrival time might be, 'just in case', 'something' might happen. Who knows what the hell is going on in that brain but the control freak dial is somewhere up at 12, where mine is dialled back to a comfortable 8. The rest, well, they don't even register. I'm not sure JJ even knew what country we were going to prior to making it to the airport, let alone need to figure out the logistics of gate numbers and alike.

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Of course you may be asking why Sydney domestic and the simple answer is that Air Asia for the moment was only making the KL run out of Melbourne. A quick jump down the Avalon was thus needed in order to get us across the line for a 2:00am picks up from Tullamarine. I guess this part of the journey I can call 'the good', the 'amicable', the 'optimistic' section. Aside from Avalon being about 15kms outside of Geelong and about 80kms from Melbourne, the drive up to Melbourne itself was alright and a night on Brunswick St, hanging out in a quaint small Spanish restaurant / bar, taking down a few drinks and lining up some tapas is pretty much what the doctor ordered. Frankly, I could have stayed there a few nights longer but that's the way Melbourne and I operate (just move there already Henry) - yes, I should.

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So 02:00 ticks on by and we're kicking back in the lounge area of Tullamarine, putting back a few drinks before flying off into the early morning sky and heading north to KL. All excited, (except for Jase - we're constantly told how he's not), we make our run down express route 1 of Tullamarine and head north.