When Things Go Wrong

We were excited to go back to the town of Vang Vien. It was our favourite town and we had about a 7 hour motorcycle journey to get there. We learned the hard way that riding in the dark in the mountains was not only scary, but it took away the view. We did not want to drive in the dark again- and it gets dark here at about 5:30. Recall that we rented our bikes in Vientiane, and the original plan was to leave them in Luang Pratang. But we decided to head back to Vientiane with them, with a stop in Vang Vien for the night.

So we filled up with gas the night before and set our alarms for 6:45am, and went to sleep dreaming of the beautiful countryside we would see on this ride.

It all started with the food on the boat cruise, I suspect. When we were cooking the little bits of raw meat the previous night, we did make a comment or two, such as, “I hope this meat hasn’t been sitting out too long,” or “Cook your meat well.”

Whatever the case, that night the cute and cozy feeling of us all sharing 5 to a room with our own bathroom wore off. I was the unlucky one whose bed was next to the bathroom. All night, I was woken up as people stumbled into the bathroom. It was a treacherous route to get here, as our stuff was everywhere and my briefcase was a little too close to the door. So every time someone had to use the bathroom, he or she would trip over it, and thus cause a racket.

“My goodness,” I thought sleepily as I was woken up again. “These people have the bladders of children!”

Dana took such a mad dash to the bathroom at some point and tripped everywhere so much, that I thought she may have killed herself.


As you may have now clued in, and I had not clued in that night, a few of my travelling companions had terribly upset stomachs and had made mad dashes to the bathroom in fear of vomiting, or because of diarrhoea.

The next morning dawned bright and early, but half of us were sick, and the other half had no sleep because of the others being sick. But we had a long ride ahead of us, so suck it up and carry on.

We did have some breakfast, which was a good thing, because little did we know at that time that it would be the last meal in 24 hours.

We left on time and felt good about ourselves. Not only would we be driving in daylight to fully experience the view, but we would have a nice relaxing evening in Vang Vien.


We were on the road for only half an hour when Meaghan’s scooter broke down. Again. It had broken down a couple days ago in the city, but a mechanic changed a spark plug and it was right as rain again.

We groaned at being stuck at the side of the road. We all stopped and determined that Kevin should whip into town on his Baja and call the bike rental place.

A minor setback only. No problem. We did express some nervousness at the state of Meaghan’s scooter, but decided to wait before getting too bent out of shape.

We made the best of the situation. We played cards in a ditch, ate Myanmain treats and played...how shall we say...adult versions of “would you rather.”

After an hour and a half, our optimism was wearing thin. And every Lao person that passed us on the road seemed to view us as some sort of interesting event to stare at. They all stared; not one person offered to help.


Kevin came roaring on his bike shortly after that, followed by a Lao dude, who turned out to be a friend of the rental guy’s. This was the guy that originally switched out the spark plug.

“Where’s his tools?” I asked Kevin.
Kevin growled. “He didn’t bring any! I told him, but either he didn’t understand, or thinks we can’t start it.”

Well as we had already determined, the bike wouldn’t start. So this guy hopped back on his scooter, and zoomed away to get his tools!

When he finally returned after quite a while, he changed the spark plug again.

We’re nervous about this. Two spark plugs in two days?

We tried to communicate with him that “we have very long way to go! Bike okay?”

“Yes, yes! No problem!” He assured us.

We asked again, and again. “Long way! Very far! Bike break down?” It was a ridiculous game of charades, as most communication here is.

He waved us away, “No problem, I fix.”

We were suspicious, but we had lost a lot of time and really couldn’t be short a bike because we had so much cargo. So we utilized the power of positive thinking that this bike WOULD make it, told Dana to say a prayer for the bike since she’s the most spiritual of all of us, and carried on.

One hour later I groaned as I turned a corner and saw Meaghan on the side of the road.
Flat tire!

We slowly brought the bike to the next village (for now there were only villages within miles) and tried to communicate with them that we needed to use some tools.


To make a very long story short, the Laos people who tried to be helpful weren’t that helpful. Every time they put a new tube in, it would puncture! Finally as they reached for a third tube, Ben motioned vehemently, “Stop! It will puncture again! Something wrong!”

Turns out they hadn’t put the strip around the rim to protect the tube from the screws or rivets or whatever.

During this time we were baking in the heat (not that I’m complaining about that, but our shirts were soaked in sweat) and it was as if we were providing a real live Broadway for the town. They all gathered around and stared at the foreigners. They would leave and call their friends. There were mostly children, but by the end of it, adults had gathered around to stare. While this is assuming at first, after 2 hours, it wears thin.

Two hours later the tire was fixed and we were on the road again.

Within 5 minutes Meaghan was stopped again with that damn scooter!

“Kevin,” she said, in tears. “It’s not shifting right. I almost lost control.”

Kevin bravely relinquished his beloved Baja (thank goodness Meaghan knows how to ride a motorcycle) and took the decrepit scooter. We all followed him and held our breath when that thing stalled, and cheered when he got it started again. Sometimes he was only going 30 km because he couldn’t shift gears, but he was moving.

We just wanted to get to Vang Vien and we had already lost so much time! I wanted to get to Vang Vien only because I knew that I would get my own room and a hot shower for $1.50 a night.

After 2 hours, the scooter stopped all together. By this time it was most definitely dusk, and Dana and Ben were ahead of us.

We noticed the gas gauge was at empty. We hadn’t filled up that long ago, but we were suspicious that maybe it was out of gas.

“After all,” Kevin said. “I’ve been driving in second the whole time.”

So once again he zoomed to the next village while Meaghan and I sat by the side of the road, getting stared at by the Laos passers-by. We cracked open a laptop and one shameless Laos guy stood behind us and stared at what we were doing. It was definitely getting dark.

More than half hour later Kevin came back with a couple vials of gas. We put them in and held our breath.

Nothing.

We all growled. This was definitely bad. It was almost dark and we were in the middle of the mountains in the middle of a country with only primitive villages and no English. And most people still had upset stomachs. And we had missed lunch and now dinner. And Dana and Ben were separated from us.

Somehow Kevin started that scooter to be able to drive it to the next town, where Dana and Ben backtracked to find us. We knew now that the spark plug needed to be changed again.

It took forever due to language barriers, but we did change it.

It was so dark by this point that you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. We were still at least 2 hours away from Vang Vien and it was well into the evening, and we were tired, hungry, and in some cases still sick. Kevin was especially struggling with an upset stomach.

But carry on! Three kilometres down the road, the damn thing broke down again!

This was disheartening. If the spark plug blew after almost 3 kilometres, this thing could definitely no longer be driven. It was completely dead. And now the town was 3 kilometres away, so we had to push the damn thing back in the dark, through the windy mountain roads, up and down!

Ben drove ahead to buy some rope, and as he was opening the bag with a knife, he sliced his finger pretty badly. So his rescue mission went awry as blood seeped everywhere. Just asking the villagers for a band-aid was challenging.


While we waited for Kevin to push the scooter back into the village, as Dana’s scooter cast light in front of him, we felt extremely low. What to do with this scooter? If we did not get this scooter back to Vientiane, we would not get our deposits, or more importantly, Kevin’s passport would not be returned. But it couldn’t be driven. We had to call the rental place, but when we made motions for “phone” to the villagers, they shook their heads so vehemently, as if it was the craziest suggestion they had ever heard. Dejected, we were now completely annoyed as the whole town gathered round to stare at us. I mean, we were miserable, and no one wants anyone to make their misery a spectacle.

So as Ben tried to get his finger to stop bleeding, and Kevin successfully pushed the scooter from hell into town, we knew we needed a place to stay.

Everything had gone terribly wrong and we were feeling extremely low, not to mention stressed about this scooter, but one thing had gone right.

Back on the road while Meaghan and I were waiting for Kevin to get gas a couple hours prior, two Lao boys on bicycles stopped and asked in extremely broken English if we were okay. We assured them we would be okay, but I don’t think they understood.

“Guesthouse, 100 metre,” was all he could say in the thickest of accents as he pointed up the road.

Meaghan had grumbled after, “Thanks, but we don’t need a guesthouse in the middle of nowhere. We need to get to Vang Vien.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” I said. “How can there possibly be a guesthouse?”

Now these words rang in our head. We needed a phone and a place to sleep, both of which seemed like non-existent prospects in the middle of the mountains. (I had at one point said “Guesthouse?” to a local, as most Lao people seem to understand that word. She shook her head so hard I swear it almost fell off.)

Kevin and I darted in that direction on our Bajas and found the guesthouse about 10 minutes later. They had 2 rooms and beds for only 4, but we didn’t care. We took them.

There was a strange shack across the street that said “police” and we figured that if this was indeed the police, they would surely have a phone. And they did! But the reception was terrible and we couldn’t make the call.

Kevin, sick, rode back to the village to tell the rest of the gang that we had accommodations. We left the broken scooter in the village and chained it up. One do gooder motioned that he would change the spark plug again. After frying 3 spark plugs, we knew this would be the temporariest of band-aids and politely declined.

They went back to the guesthouse where I was waiting for them. I was dying for a shower and didn’t realize as I stood there with nothing on and the water trickled out, that there was no hot water. I shivered as I washed my hair. Later when I went to brush my teeth, I realized the tap didn’t work at all, so I had to use the cold shower.

The rest of the crew came back and Kevin felt so terrible that we decided I should bunk up with Dana and Ben. This bed—which was more like a layer of bricks with a thin sheet over top—was very small and we had the worst sleep again. And Ben’s finger was still bleeding.

But things always look brighter in the morning when the sun shines. The wretched day did end and the sun came up. We realized that we were in some sort of Lao truck stop town and there was a restaurant. After going without lunch or dinner yesterday, breakfast was definitely in order.

We desperately hoped the guy who rented our bikes to us would let us leave it in the town. There was no way we could get it back.


The restaurant did have a phone! But the reception was so bad, it was situated just so, so it was the most Mickey Mouse way of making phone calls.

But we got through!

And he told us that we could definitely not leave the bike there. We had to get it back. He went so far as to ask us if we played with the choke to start it. Then told us to change the spark plug again. Did he think we were stupid?

Maybe it was the daylight, maybe it was the fact that stomachs were more settled, or maybe Dana’s prayers got answered in a twisted sort of way, but we got the scooter back to Vientiane.

We decided to tow it.

The guy called back on the cell phone and we told him, “We changed the spark plug, I think we’re stupid, we’ll be in Vientiane if things go well.”

And remarkably things did go well. Kevin towed it for 200 kilometres through the mountains while Ben steered it! It was ridiculous and completely Mickey Mouse. I mean, most people would tow for a couple dozen kilometres, but a couple hundred?

Yes, maybe it was dangerous, but considering our limited options, we were just relieved that we were able to get the damn thing back in one piece- with all of us intact as well.

So we’re in Vientiane, rid of the bikes, and in much better spirits. Let’s hope we never have a day like that again. Today we hop on a bus for a 24 hour ride to Vietnam...