Our Craziest Travel Story Yet…
After traveling full-time for 8 months and part-time many years before that, I can confidently say that the craziest 24 hours we’ve experienced was in Nong Khiaw. Nong Khiaw is a small village nestled in the mountains in northern Laos. The Nam Ou River splits through the towering forested mountains that attract hikers from all over the world. This is often skipped on many travelers’ Laos itineraries, but it is 100% worth it, even considering the crazy time we had here. Without further ado, let’s get into our craziest travel story yet!
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Part 1: Caving in Nong Khiaw
We spent the afternoon exploring intricate caves of Nong Khiaw with two of our friends. None of us were ready for what the next 24 hours would bring, and the caves were definitely an exciting start. We overcame our combined claustrophobia and squeezed through this first cave which was 150 meters long and was pitch dark.
This was the perfect warm-up for our next cave, which you had to get really muddy for in order to get to the end of the cave:
This was a super awesome experience and one of the craziest things I’ve done while traveling!
Part 2: Tuk Tuk Crash
After the caves, our Tuk-Tuk driver was attempting to drive us up the hill from where he was parked. For those who don’t know what a Tuk-Tuk is, it is a motorcycle with some form of extra seating. Our particular Tuk-Tuk was a Skylab, which had a pickup truck-style bed with bench seating. As you can imagine, the engine on a small motorcycle is not always powerful enough to pull the weight from the people squished in the back. However, our driver certainly tried! We drove up part of the hill before slowly rolling backwards, towards the direction of the Nam Ou River, our driver tried to do a 3 point turn, and while we were in reverse he accelerated extremely quickly, and the next thing we knew, we went flying backwards towards the river, before we crashed into a tree. We had to quickly shift the weight from 2 people on each side to 3 people on one side and 1 on the other or else the Tuk-Tuk would have completely flipped over! Thankfully, only the Tuk-Tuk had slight damage to it and we were all okay!
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Part 3: Hiking Through the Darkness
We decided to go for a hike to watch the sunset over the Nong Khiaw Village, which was a great experience. The problem was, we waited at the top until the sun was well over the mountains, leading us to hike down in the pitch black. Even with our phone flashlights, we could barely see two feet in front of us. We descended the steep trail safely but it was definitely an adventure! Because this area of Laos was heavily bombed by the American government (visit the COPE center in Vientiane to learn more), there are unexploded cluster bombs scattered over Laos to this day. If we had been thinking straight, we probably would have hiked down while is still light out so we could avoid going off the trail!
Part 4: The Most Interesting Menu Offering
After our nighttime hiking adventure we decided to grab some food and a well-deserved beer. At the restaurant, we found the most interesting menu item—opium! That’s right, fully visible on the menu was opium tea or just straight-up opium. We passed on the opium and had some of the best curry in Laos!
Part 5: Kayak and Boat Ride
We only had one full day in Nong Khiaw, and we didn’t have time to kayak and take a boat ride during that one full day. The next morning, we convinced a tour guide to let us do a combination of kayaking, boating, then shuttling from Nong Khiaw, to another city, Luang Prabang. Kayaking went great!
Then we left our kayaks and our skipper, who didn’t speak any English took us on a beautiful boat ride.
Part 6: Stranded in the Laos Countryside
Our skipper dropped us off, we tipped him, but didn’t see our shuttle. We opened our Google maps to see where we were, and we were miles and miles away from where we were actually supposed to get picked up. We approached a Laos family and one of them happened to live in the US, explained we were on private property as far as the eye could see, and they even offered us to join them for lunch! We felt bad for trespassing already and didn’t want to take their food, but then they offered us a trip on their new jet skis. (We also forgot to mention these people were incredibly wealthy!)
Our tour operator eventually sent our shuttle to pick us up and took us on the bumpiest ride of our lives!
Read About the Amazing Things To Do In Nong Khiaw
That’s A Wrap! Our Craziest Travel Story
All in all, this was the craziest 24 hours on our travels, and we’ll never forget this wonderful experience in northern Laos. We still 100% recommend going Nong Khiaw and spending a few days here. This crazy travel story and more is why we love traveling full-time!
