I wanted to write down the story of this trip. I wasn’t trying to tell anyone how to do it. I don’t think many people my age would have taken the same chance I did. It was a special trip for me, my first time abroad. Instead of a modern, wealthy country, I went to Laos, which was poorer and less developed than Vietnam. What I found there was quiet, unspoilt countryside.
Reading my notes now, I’d done a fair bit of preparation. I wouldn’t call it thorough. I skipped the essentials, like changing money, getting a SIM card and booking a room :D
I’d written down a few basic phrases in Lao, emergency numbers and an itinerary. I still put together itineraries like this for Schengen visa applications.
After class one day, I rode straight from Hanoi to Nam Dinh and applied for a passport at the immigration office. Then I got something to eat, rode around for a while, and went home, another 25 kilometres away.
I went back for the passport a week or two later.
Passport in hand, ready to go somewhere far away :) I wore my cycling-across-Vietnam bracelet in photos everywhere back then.
I used Google Maps to plan the route. There’s even a tab about a dam collapse in Laos in the screenshot :D It was the stormy season, with landslides all over Laos, but since when was the weather going to stop me? :)))
The summer after my first year at university, I cycled across Vietnam. My parents forbade it and I went anyway. Afterwards they told everyone their child had cycled from Hanoi to the tip of Cà Mau :D
The summer after my second year, some of the cycling group planned a backpacking trip around Indochina. It cost 15 million đồng each, plus whatever we spent on our own. I asked Mum to lend me 10 million đồng. I was borrowing it, but she still didn’t want me to go.
Then I did something that worried everyone even more. I rode my motorbike into Laos on my own. Looking back, it really was dangerous. I wouldn’t dare do it that way again.
When it became clear I was going anyway, Mum gave me 700,000 đồng, and my older brother and sister each chipped in a little. I did some tutoring and worked at a company in my second year. That gave me just enough money to go 😎
From the trip Laos. Read the Vietnamese original on Blogger
