I don't know where to start. It's hard to summarise three weeks overseas - travelling and somehow finding your way through the countryside, four cities and two countries - into a acceptable length of text. Even though it got a bit tedious with the fundraising and planning during semester, our post-exams trip was well worth it in the end.

I don't remember who took this photo. Rip.

If you didn't catch on from my sudden spike in instagram posts (or you never read this post), I went on a volunteering/travel trip to Laos organised by Global Village @ Arc UNSW. We stayed with SAE LAO Project, about 20 minutes from Vang Vieng by tuk tuk, which is essentially a ute with a roof and sides for the tray and their equivalent of a taxi.

Here's a map of our travel route in Laos, which is also a well-worn path among backpackers:

I'm so grateful that we did take the time to do our research and get the most out of our short time in Laos - here's a snapshot of our adventures as we backpacked (well, suitcased) through this amazing country.

Day 1 to 2: Sydney -> Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (3hr stopover) -> Vientiane (Lao Capital) -> Vang Vieng

We left Sydney on a night flight with AirAsia and spent the rest of the night travelling back in time - first three hours, and then another one even though Laos is north-east of Malaysia. #wut

Cheap carrier flights are good and bad - they're cheap, but that means they're cheap. That means no inflight entertainment, you have to purchase any food, they don't give you blankets - nothing. It's alright for short or night time flights though, since you're just sleeping most of the time anyway.

There were camera wars, racing our way through security and running down walking escalators - and eventually, sleep. We landed in Vientiane at around 9am local time and although initially it was a bit scary not understanding the language, it's fine to communicate in broken English works (until you learn a bit of their language).

A street in Mi'xay, Vientiene. Those electrical wires look intense.

We managed to get a taxi to Soutchai travel agency in Mi'xay to catch our minibus to Vang Vieng just fine. Unfortunately we had a hiccup with accomodation the first night, but after wandering the streets with our suitcases trailing behind us making enough noise to announce us as stuck-up tourists and wondering where we would end up if we couldn't find somewhere to sleep, we finally found a place to stay (but hey this makes a great story).

Our minibus driver stopped several times at roadside local markets like this to pick up a chip-like substance for the Lao people on our bus. It was pretty funny tbh. They also drive on the right side of the road.

THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Visas for Aussies are $30USD
• A prepaid sim card with about 5GB internet for a month was about $10-12AUD (get one you'll thank yourself)
• I used a Commbank travel money card (free for students) - we found the lowest withdrawal fee was at JBD ATMs if you withdrew less than $2m, but ANZ ATMs give you a good deal especially if you're an ANZ customer if you withdraw more than $2m in one go. Would recommend withdrawing $1m at a time, something which I didn't do so I wasted a bit more money on fees. 
• There are a lot of travel agencies, so shop around (or haggle) to get yourself the best deal for buses and tours and bike/motorbike hire
• People there are nice, but you're going to get ripped off so haggle your heart out for tuk tuks, food, accommodation, clothes, souvenirs etc. You might not have as much luck at convenience or legit looking stores though. 
• Cheapest accommodation we got was $30.000 kip a night per person (with some haggling and luck) but the most expensive was somewhere between $60.000-$70.000 kip a night per person as a budget traveller.
• Bring a backpack rather than a suitcase. It will make your life easier. 

Day 3 to 13: SAE LAO / Vang Vieng & surrounds

The first morning, three of us woke up super early and went exploring/looking for breakfast. We stumbled across a local store serving noodles, soup, fresh rice noodles and an assortment of breads, and were treated to a spectacular sunrise.

A bowl of super tasty rice noodles (laksa soup but not spicy I think) and a few Asian rolls (the kind that goes with congee) cost about 20.000-30.000kip, $3-5AUD! We went back to this place later in our trip because it was so good.

As per our luck, we missed the tuk tuk that we were supposed to be on (and already paid for) and we ended up paying around 20.000kip each for another tuk tuk to get to SAE LAO - all because we thought the tuk tuk left at 10am instead of 9am. Whoops.

Where we hung out & ate our meals at SAE LAO.

First lunch at SAE LAO!

There were four adorable kittens and mama cat, and our resident dog, Cafe, who lived with us too. Cafe is such a smart dog - and because he has such a cute reaction we spoiled with head scratches (especially behind the ears) when we were there. We also shared the site with mama pig & her piglets, ducks, chickens and fish, some of which were caught & eaten while we were there.

There's also a switch that pumps water into a water tank for use in taps and showers - we would yell 'bom min nan!' if we needed water and 'nam teng' if the water was overflowing. (Disclaimer: I can't remember if that's the accurate spelling lol - Christy was our Lao expert).

Our main volunteering job was meant to be teaching, but unfortunately we weren't allowed to since the Lao PDR government had banned SAE LAO from teaching English classes to the local school kids. When we got there it'd been a month like this already, and the education coordinators were hard at work trying to get the syllabus rewritten for approval. We ended up helping with other SAE LAO onsite projects (a filter for the kitchen, start building a shelf and a small hydroponics style nursery), harvesting the rice fields and a fundraiser in town.
Edit: As of end of January 2017 they are back up and running!

Hard at work on our water filter for the kitchen!

Helping with a fundraiser at La La Land Bar one afternoon.

Even though we look like we're chilling, the rice fields was tough and it really made me appreciate the food we have and how easy it is for us in Australia - it got quite hot even though the rice farming sessions were 7-9am and 3-5pm. It's also something where everyone in the community jumps in to help out with. We're also surrounded by mountains everywhere in the countryside, it's beautiful. | Photos from resident photographer, Christy.

I enjoyed meeting and spending time with the other short-term and long-term volunteers, and it was nice to have our meals together as a family. Cooking was rather fun, even though I managed to burn the tips of two fingers and was quite uncertain of how my cooking would turn out. We had our own 'ricefields' song thanks to Elodie, a nurse/singer from France, and we had fun going into town, having dinner together and then hitting up a bar or two before Buddha days or if someone was leaving. I miss sitting in the back of a truck (ute) and feeling the wind whip around us (although it must feel like that for dogs) and and doing things that you would never dream of doing in suburban Australia like sitting on the top rack of a tuk tuk at night, or hiring a motorbike and riding around town & to waterfalls.

Just casually riding on the top of a tuk tuk. | Photo: Christy

Buddha days are the equivalent of our Sunday - except which day it's on changes from week to week. It's a day of rest for the Lao people - a day where no one does any hard labour, which equalled a day off from volunteering for us.

There were two while we were with SAE LAO - the first we spent motorbiking to Kaeng Ngui Waterfall (5km down a dirt track with a short hike) before exploring town, haggling down some cool pairs of pants, finding a cute restaurant for dinner where you sit cross legged, and took a tuk tuk back. Bike hire was around 60.000kip I think? And 10.000kip worth of fuel would have been enough but we were ambitious and bought around 15.000kip worth of fuel instead - only to never reach our second destination.

Started our own bikie gang!

Contemplating Kaeng Ngui Waterfall.

The second Buddha Day we booked ourselves a Kayak-Cave Tubing-Kayak 9am-4pm day tour including a decent lunch (our guides killed two chickens for chicken skewers), great tour guides & tuk tuk transfers for 80.000kip (around $13AUD). We were really lucky - we booked it with Wonderful Tours the night before after doing some haggling/price comparing and they also put us on the wrong tour group so we got ziplining (70.000kip/$12AUD) for free!

All decked out for our zipline around the treetops - it took about 45mins to complete the whole thing and there was something like 8 ziplines? Yeah good fun. | Photo: Andrew

Are we bikie gang enough yet?

We also checked out the night life - we found that there's two good clubs - Sakura Bar and Viva's. They look quite derelict in the day but it's great at night - and what's better is that Sakura gave out free Lao Whisky mixers between 8-9pm! They also have balloons containing nitrous oxide for 20.000kip - also popular. Reggae Bar is also where you go for shrooms and other stuff - and they've always got reggae music playing. We bought soju from the convenience store for 20.000kip a bottle (~$3AUD) and made friends with a bar owner who let us do soju shots at the bar - and as you would expect a few of us got drunk that night, along with another night where we managed to sneak soju into a club in cider bottle. We took pancakes as drunk food (since there was nothing fried at that time of night) and I already miss the food from the street vendors.

Good ol' sandwich from a street store - they range from 10.000kip to 20.000kip but of course you can haggle.

Another classic - although this is a savory bacon cheese pancake for around 10.000-15.000kip. Most pancakes are sweet.

If I'm honest, it was difficult at first to accept that my feet were going to get dirty and wet (from the leaking kitchen sink) which made me feel a little like a clean freak, but after the first few days I stopped thinking so much about it - and by the end I cared a lot less. I feel lucky that it wasn't too much of a culture shock - I didn't find the flat floored shower-bathroom too weird thanks to having stayed in similar places in Guangzhou, China. Quite a few funny things happened in the bathroom - the sink fell off the wall; water would run straight from the basin to the floor (ie no drain); one girl decided she was impatient and washed all of her clothes with powder and stomping all over them; and we ran out of water halfway through showers, a luxury I do appreciate in Sydney.

Volunteering in another country was such a worthwhile experience I wouldn't have gotten anywhere else - from all the new things I saw and experienced, the people I met, learning their language and just being in such a drastically different but beautiful place - and I am so grateful to my angst which told me to apply for it last semester, even if I didn't know anyone else doing it. The experience itself is something I would recommend and it was well worth the money (was relatively cheap). Thanks to our coordinator, Austin, for organising and to my GV fam for the amazing experience.

Saying goodbye to SAE LAO.

Ready for the truck ride out to town!

The GV crew with Cafe, Sae Lao's resident dog.

I also had some fun travelling to Luang Prabang & Kuala Lumpur afterwards which I've written about in another post to avoid making this excessively long. If you do have questions please shoot me a message - trips like these are such worthwhile experiences. It'll change how you see the world (not kidding).

Until next time!

With love, Sarah x

Read Part 2 of this trip.

Last photo we took together at Luang Prabang airport - bye Christy!