One Way Ticket

The adventure has begun. 

We've sold the car, rented the house, paid down debts and bought our One Way Ticket from Gold Coast Australia to our first stop Luang Prabang in Laos PDR.  Next stop - who knows - but buying a van and travelling overland to London is definitely one of the options.  We have given ourselves 3 months in Laos to help us make that next decision.  If we are happy or job incomplete we will stay longer or if not we will move on.

Caution:  Australia was not happy with us purchasing a one-way ticket as this can cause problems in Thailand but with Laos this is not a problem.  We had to sign a waiver that we would not hold the airline responsible if we were not allowed entry without an exit ticket.  But everything was fine as we knew it would be.

We do have a real purpose in Luang Prabang

We are very familiar with Laos having lived here for 5 years back in the late 80's and having visited many times since.  The place is modernising rapidly with a noticable increase in modern cars, mobile phones and tablets and the standard of accommodation and food has increased ten fold.  Thank goodness - we now have a proper flushing western toilet and a good supply of hot water as well as air conditioning and a comfortable and clean bed and the food is excellent.  While we love adventure we do not compromise health or safety - at our age that is important - but we are on a budget.

In Laos there are a lot of people who are very poor and who need help - Laos being one of the poorest countries in the world - and we've decided to be the representatives for Broadbeach Rotary Club and assist with one of their preferred international projects and help a few of the local orphanages to renovate the overcrowded and dilapidated dormitories.  We are aware of over 1800 children in 3 local orphanages, so for three months we are fund raising and buying the supplies to be able to complete the dormitory renovations and help where we can - blankets, school supplies, food and toiletries.  We will be joined by some fellow Rotarians and a Nurse later in December to also assist with the project.  So keep in touch.  The adventure will get better.  Our daughter, her partner and our two grandkids are also coming.

Laos is very beautiful but is also very ugly in many areas.  Rubbish, poverty, alongside wealth, and beauty.  If you are coming to Laos - get in touch we will be able to direct you to some areas not on the normal tourist agenda.  If you are in Rotary and coming as a group we can make all the internal arrangements and show you some very worthwhile causes.  We do all our work voluntarily but we do expect that you will be able to donate to your chosen cause once you have seen the plight.

Getting Started

• From Australia we pre-shipped 180 kilos of items including computer equipment, printers and camera equipment as well as some essential kitchen utensils, sheets and towels etc and personal items and an egg crate foam mattress (thank goodness) - beds are usually hard in Asia.  This was so we could support ourselves in an apartment without having to buy items.  However we could only ship to Vientiane (The Capital) to ensure delivery.  This cost under AUD$8.00 a kilo so well worth it and we will need these things anyway for our continued journey.
• We arrived in Luang Prabang via Bangkok by Bangkok Air which was excellent.  We had 30 day visitors Visas granted on arrival at US$31 per person at the airport.  If you are coming make sure you have additional passport photos as you will need them for the Visas. 
• We stayed at a very nice guest house in Luang Prabang for a few days and arranged for other larger accommodation in another guest house to be able to function as an office when we got back.
• We flew down to Vientiane with Lao aviation (fantastic flight over the scenic mountains) after a few days in Luang Prabang and organized the collection of the luggage through customs in Vientianne.
• The customs was quite simple really and no problems - trick is everything is a personal item and computer boxes and printer boxes were painted black so not recognizable.  Luckily we found a sympathetic lady who spoke English and was able to fill out the Lao forms for us which could have been a major hurdle.
• We stayed at a great guest house familiar to us in Vientiane - which we have nicknamed The Most Exotic Marigold Hotel - Vientiane - for obvious reasons.
• We bought some dongles to assist with internet connections and set up our plan
• We organized for Sim cards into our Nokia phones - to handle our local phone calls.  Our Smart phones just cost too much to run from here.
• We organized a mini van and driver to drive us and our luggage back up to Luang Prabang - around a 12 hour trip through very winding roads but outstanding scenery - well worth the effort.  Average speed would be around 25 km per hour.  So also quite safe.
• Eight hours into the trip we found some accommodation - very, very, basic and now wish we had given the accommodation to the driver and slept in the van.  We should have stayed at an earlier town Kasi which has some very nice accommodation - but it was too early in the day to stop.  However, the accommodation did have running water and a flushing toilet and an air conditioner but the bed was so so hard, the concrete floor would have been more bearable except it was dirty.  The view however from the bedroom window was outstanding.  I have put in a picture of the view and therefore made it all worth while.
• We arrived in Luang Prabang the next day and settled into our new accommodation.  Took 3 - 4 days to get the computers up and running as the local Wi-Fi whilst free is also very very slow.  Too slow for serious work.

What's next?

We have a job to do and also get ready for our visitors at the end of December.  We have a need for a strong learning curve on our new cameras and we need to get set up on blogs and social media.  We will be assessing one of the orphanages so will post some pictures and comments next week.  Please comment and like us on facebook etc.  Love to hear from you. 

Cheers

Joma.