I'll be honest. I was a bit bummed to leave Tokyo for the summer.
I had really found my groove there. Teaching yoga in person, playing tennis, fun motorcycle trips, a really cool women’s community, new friends, just really loving the city and our life in it. Leaving that made me a tad sad.
But I'm always up for an adventure. And my husband, Clint, had an internship to get to, which meant a summer in Vientiane, Laos.
Getting there: the Bangkok to Vientiane night train
There are no direct flights from Tokyo to Vientiane, so of course we routed through Bangkok.
We spent a few days catching up with old friends at our favorite restaurants. Bangkok is one of those cities that just picks up where you left off.
Then we boarded the overnight train to Vientiane.
If you have not done this yet, I highly recommend it. There is a direct train from Bangkok to Vientiane, and it is a lovely way to travel. Make sure to book train number 26. You will thank me.
Arriving at o-dark-early
Clint has spent twenty-five years in the humanitarian sector and navigated some of the most complex operations in the world. His first visa situation happened on the way to his Rotary fellowship internship in Laos.
When we arrived in Vientiane at o-dark-early, the immigration officials flagged that his passport was running low on pages. There was a moment when I turned to the visa official and asked if I could get a $40 refund for the visa I just paid for if they were going to deny Clint entry. The officials conferred, assessed the situation, and determined that a visa booklet would work. On one condition: Clint had to make an appointment immediately and apply for a new passport. And just like that, summer was back on. And of course, he made an appointment at the Consulate.
Forty-eight hours after arriving in Vientiane, we were on a plane to Savannakhet, then a three-hour drive toward the Vietnamese border to meet a beneficiary of A Bigger Table Asia. Another stretch of the Mekong, another part of the country I hadn't seen. The Mekong looks different everywhere you find it, but it still surprised me each time. (I know, I can’t stop talking about this river. So much history.) That visit, and the follow-up thirty days later, got its own post. Spoiler alert, it was about frogs and bananas!
A summer in Vientiane
Coming back to Vientiane, I remembered how much I loved this city. Vientiane has hundreds of temples, and you really do turn a corner and find another beautiful one. The people were so kind. The food was extraordinary. Coconut cream donuts, passion fruit, chocolate tarts, delicious baguettes... I digress. And how lucky was I that an amazing French pastry shop was just a five-minute walk away!
The pace was slow in the best possible way. Nobody drove like they were trying to win Talladega. At the end of the day, locals gathered on street corners with a Beer Lao, good music, and some crisps, just being together. I loved that so much.
We also managed a weekend at one of my favorite places in the world, the Riverside Hotel in Vang Vieng. The mountains were just gorgeous, and I loved watching the kids jump off the bridge. We took the Laos-China railway up to Luang Prabang. We took a Mekong cruise to see the Pak Ou Caves. Just wow. I was genuinely bummed we didn't have time to continue all the way up to China, but that wasn't in the cards for this trip. We were there for an internship, not a holiday. Next time.
An unexpected hobby
Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I also found a new hobby.
I had been looking for one for a while. Our Tokyo apartment is small, so watercolors are out. I genuinely cannot use knitting needles. Sewing is not for me. I get by with chopsticks, barely. And then I did a refresh on my website and fell completely in love with creating websites.
I know. A yoga teacher and coach who falls in love with website building. It makes no sense. And yet here we are. I spent hours of that summer happily building things on the internet and hiding from the heat.
A Bigger Table Asia needed a new website. I offered to build it. Clint was their first intern and I was their second, unofficial one. Between the two of us, we covered humanitarian programming, field operations, and now, apparently, web development.
House sitting with Peppermint and Millie
One of the unexpected gifts of this summer was the kindness of everyone in Laos.
We never stayed in a hotel while in Vientiane. Friends connected us with people who needed their homes and loved pets looked after.
Peppermint, the kitty, was the boss of our first house. She was adorable and deeply committed to her hunting career. (There was a frog incident. I will not elaborate, given what else I have been writing about this summer, but Peppermint was involved.)
Our second house came with Millie, a small dog with large ambitions who killed a rooster and several rats while we were there and who was also in love with Clint. I believe she is still quietly plotting my demise so she can have Clint to herself.
Millie's parents also lent us their Kolao, a scooter made right there in Laos. The only thing we needed to do was buy helmets. The helmets stayed in Vientiane, as we have our own in Tokyo. And that felt right, passing something along to whoever borrows the scooter next.
The lettuce
One evening we were on the Kolao, groceries hooked to the front of the scooter the way everyone does it there, and our lettuce came off in a turn. There it was, sitting in its bag in the middle of the road. Clint did a U-turn. I got off the bike. Traffic stopped in both directions without anyone honking and without anyone accelerating. I ran to the middle of the road, picked up the lettuce, got back on the scooter, and when Clint pulled away, all the traffic started again. Just like that.
I have been in places where I would have been run over. I am not joking when I say Vientiane was a slow town full of kindness.
Laos was a community of kindness. The immigration officials found a solution at o-dark-early. The strangers who handed us their keys. The scooter. The helmets left behind. The traffic that waited for the lettuce. I could share countless stories, but this post is long enough!
What a magical summer.
I've been back in Tokyo for a hot minute and I'm enjoying Mitaka, our small town of about 190,000 people, and treasuring what this summer gave us. Tokyo is full of people on a mission; Laos was the opposite. I'm hoping to carry a little of that slower pace back with me, in this big, beautiful city.
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