Surviving the Inevitable on the Road: A Backpacker's Guide to Getting In and Out of Jams

I started my solo backpacking trip in Laos in Januarywithout having done much research into the country at all. I knew that I wanted to spend at least two weeks there, and I ended up in Si Phan Don after traveling through the north.

Getting to Don Det is a bit of a nightmare, but I'll save that story for another occasion. I will mention that you should NOT decide to stay in the worst-rated hotel you can find online in Pakse (the gateway to Don Det) just out of curiosity. Needless to say, breakfast isn't included.

Around the fourth day of my stay in Don Det, I decided to go for a run out to the waterfalls on Don Khon. I had run part of this trail before; the hazy river views are absolutely stunning in the morning. About 20 feet from my guesthouse on this particular morning, though, I saw an older woman approaching with a dog. I remember thinking he was cute, but as I ran past him, he turned his head and nipped the back of my leg. A friendly nip, one might say, but nevertheless it had punctured my skin.

A sick feeling started to settle in my stomach after I returned to my room and googled “rabies in Laos”. Basically, after calling the Australian Embassy in Vientiane, it seemed like there was no way for me to get the shots in time.

I tried to calm down by assuring myself that the dog was not rabid, and, accepting my fate, I went to the front desk at the guesthouse to clean my wound with some Bacardi 151 and a wad of tissue. The owner advised me to go to a "clinic" in Don Khon, but it was abandoned. When I returned, she said, “Wait a minute,” came back in 5 minutes and said, “Ubon. We leave in 30 minutes.”

Ubon Ratchathani is about an hour away from the Lao-Thai border. Essentially what this turned out to involve was taking the guesthouse owner’s private boat (not as fancy as you may be thinking) across the river, followed by a number of beaten up vans across the border, and then taking the same course back again the next day. I made it back to Don Det rabies-free, thanks to the amazing locals, and left for Cambodia by bus the next day.

I mean, sure, I almost got rabies, and spent the better part of two days trying to beat the clock in some of the worst vehicles on the worst roads I’ve ever been on. But looking at it from a different perspective, I managed to get my rabies shots at a relatively affordable price via one hell of a road trip across the Lao-Thai border. It all depends on how you choose to remember it.