Where's Lacie? I want to go home!

Sometimes things do not always go as planned.

The next morning we were to set off, back to Vientiane. I hate buses with an unreasonable passion so I suggested that we do the kayaking trip from Vang Vieng back to Vientiane in lieu of the four hour busride with the other 20 somethings. Brilliant plan: bus ride for an hour, 3 hours of kayaking with lunch and another bus ride for an hour! We wake up on Tuesday morning and off we go! We set off with two Lao guides and two Austrian tourists in a large tuk tuk (not a mini-bus as described). The journey is bumpy and longer than an hour (as described) but the unofficial nickname of Lao PDR is Lao Please Don’t Rush for good reason. Everything is pretty “bo pen nyang” or “no worries” so we jump in our two person kayaks, Lacie and me in one, guides in one and Austrians in one, and head down the river. We had read on the trip description that there were some rapids that we would be going down but I have kayaked in places where there are “rapids” before and usually they consist of a few bumps, you scream when you get splashed with water and you are on your merry way. As we approach the first set of rapids, the guides turn back to each of us and tell us to secure our glasses in the pouches on the kayak. After losing my glasses while sailing when I was 12, I always wear those dorky croakie glasses strings so I figured that I was ok (please note, Dad, I do listen to you now!). We try to follow where the guides are but within seconds, Lacie and I have capsized our boat and we are in the water. The current is very strong and the waves are stronger and I get pulled under and am unable to surface myself for a sufficient amount of time that 1) I think I am drowning, 2) I think Lacie is drowning because I can feel someone thrashing next to me, 3) I am annoyed that I have survived the crazies at Vang Vieng and am now going to die kayaking with a guide, who, by the way, doesn’t seem to be concerned that I am drowning. Every time I surface and get a half breath of air, I also get a half breath of water and get pushed back under. I have no concept of how long I was underwater but it was long enough to have the sensation that I was drowning, a sensation that I have never felt before, and that I was not going to be able to swim strong enough to get out of the current. Finally, I did pop out of the current and ended up next to the Austrian boys’ capsized boat, which I clung to as I started screaming hysterically, over and over, “Where is Lacie? Where is Lacie?” Finally, the boys, who were also clinging to the boat, told me that she was with the guides down the river. Then, I, of course, started screaming, “I want to go home! I want to go home!” You never quite know how you will react when you are in a situation that you perceive as an emergency but I am glad that my first reaction was “Where is my friend?” I will say, however, those croakie glass strings are genius because, through my tumble through the rapids, my glasses stayed on my face. At that point we were in the middle of nowhere and could not go home. Lacie and I split up and got on kayaks with the guides who helped us traverse the rest of the rapids. The rest of the day would have been quite lovely, had I not been so hysterical- a delicious picnic lunch next to the river and some more kayaking- and with the added fact that I no longer trusted these guides who didn't seem to think that it was a big deal at all that three of their four charges (one Austrian guy didn't seem to go under the water at all) had felt like they were going to imminently die. We then stopped and got picked up by tuk-tuk (again, not a mini-bus) that drove us the THREE hours back to Vientiane (a trip that was described as one hour in the brochure). Lots of bumps, lots of pot holes, a hard bench and at one point we had a critical mass of 12 people, 20 bags of coal, 6 bags of rice, and a duck in an area that would have been comfortable for 6 people. But the scenery on the way home, through villages and rice patty fields, was beautiful and, honestly, at that point a few bumps in the road didn’t seem so bad.

Soaked, tired, annoyed, but trying to smile.

The river that tried to kill me- looks so innocent, doesn't it?

stopover for lunch
it took a lot for me to want to get back in these things after lunch

I didn't realize at this point that we would be joined by eight other passengers
(with our group of four), bags of rice and a duck.
You can see the bags of coal already neatly placed at the front of the tuk tuk.

But if you could get over the fact that our hour long journey turned into three,
it really was a lovely ride!

As an aside, I do feel safe in Lao almost all of the time. The tour company that we went on the tour with said that the guides were trained in CPR and rescue techniques. They probably were. I am not sure that there was really anything they could have done to "save us" once we went in the water. I wish that they had warned us that there was a near 100% chance that we would capsize but I also wish that I had asked more specific questions about the safety training of the guides and the size of the rapids. I assumed that because they did not specifically tell me that novice kayakers might have trouble with the rapids, the rapids would be manageable. This was an incorrect assumption and an important lesson. I would think about going on an outdoor "adventure-y" tour again but I would ask more questions and not make any assumptions about the safety standards that I would expect in the US.