Were We Safe? Take A Look…

Travel isn’t about staying in your comfort zone, sometimes you just have to seize the moment to embrace a new experience. It’s not always about safety belts, health and safety and life jackets. Here’s just a few of those occasions…

We spent a whole day like this, sat on a blanket on a roof rack, clinging on to the struts for dear life as Khaled took us to various viewpoints in the desert. All the other similar rides were in the back of a pick up, but not Khaled, he just stuck us on his roof rack and sped across the sand, much to everyone’s amusement.

If you’re out in the Sunderbans mangrove swamps, way beyond where the roads end, and you need to reach the next island, you have no choice but to catch one of these. We took this very one, on its return journey, just as crammed. With our loaded backpacks between our knees, our centre of gravity tilted ever so slightly backwards towards the water. And there was nothing to hold on to.

You can find plenty of horror stories on the internet about bus journeys in Laos. So, what could possibly go wrong as we caught an ordinary cattle class bus from Nong Khiaw to Luang Prabang? How about being struck head on by a bus coming in the opposite direction?! This picture is the aftermath, the roof rack dislodged, having sheared off the top of the other bus on impact.

Seizing the moment is part of the essential travel experience. And sometimes you simply have to shift your decision making process just a little, and, with a bit of luck, it ends up like this…