No time for regrets

Where are you from?
Colombia, and you?
Colombia! That’s so much interesting than being English.

I disagreed, but that’s how we met. And from that moment on we travelled around Laos together even thought she was twenty years older than me. Somehow, it didn’t feel strange, I just had a feeling that she was the kind of person I wanted to become at her age: fresh, joyful and free.

After admiring the mountains that surrounded the city, the beautiful temples and the French architecture, shopping on the colorful night market, getting the most painful -yet relaxing- massage and sensing the spiritual vibes by observing the monks with their orange robes, we had to leave Luang Prabang since I had a plane to catch in Bangkok three days later.

Vientiane, the capital city of Laos is also the last city before reaching the Thai border. On the taxi that was going to take us from Vientiane to Udon Thani, we prepared a schedule in anticipation of our trip’s last two days. As we reached the Thai border and met the migration officer for the passport control, he tells me that I cannot enter the Thai territory, since I don’t have a multiple entries visa.

The drama ensued: I went from one country to another, crossing the bridge that connects the two border posts, the Friendship Bridge, many times without being able to enter any of the two countries: in Laos, I was required to file a new visa in Thailand and vice-versa!

Seeing the increasingly anxious look on my travel companion’s face and the drops of sweat on the forehead of the taxi driver, I told them to continue their way.

And that’s how I said goodbye to Sarah on the Friendship Bridge.