A Lao-sy Experience to say the Least

Pardon my French… Where the fuck to begin. It is time for an update of the downward spiral that we have experienced since my last update. After a few and I mean FEW pleasant days in Vang Vieng which included exploring a gorgeous blue lagoon, motorbiking across one of the sketchiest bridges I have ever seen to get there, and seeing a beautiful sunset. All hell broke loose when Izzy started showing symptoms of some not so fun food poisoning. This was the start of the madness that would be our next week. When Iz was in so much pain and I had consulted a doctor online it felt that the only smart next move was to get her to a hospital. So I packed a bag with a hoodie, water, socks, eye mask, headphones, her passport and wallet, organized getting a car to take us and we left the home stay we were staying in, just outside of town. 

When we got to the emergency room it seemed nearly deserted. There was one nurse and one other man that was presumed to be the doctor. After having to holler to get his attention from staring down at his phone with a headphone in, he leisurely walked over to the desk and I proceeded to communicate what was going on. I explained that Izzy had severe stomach pain, listed the rest of her symptoms and that she was very allergic to acetaminophen and under no circumstances was to be given this medication. He moved us to a fluorescently lit room lined with rubbery wrapped hospital beds. As Izzy moaned in pain he took her temperature and then proceeded to say he wanted to give her an injectable medication. Questions asked? Zero. Stomach palpations? None. Offer for fluids or any kind of rehydration? As if. I proceeded to look up the medication and it was basically just a pain medication. Nothing to treat the root of the problem. This was already infuriating and seemingly unhelpful. When I pushed for anything that we could do to treat the problem… not just her discomfort, he offered putting a towel on her forehead, an antacid and a fever reducer. Izzy was getting seemingly worse at this point so we decided to say okay and he left me with a prescription order sheet and he went and got the prescriptions. While he did so I looked into the prescriptions he had charged me for. The antacid was incredibly mild and only helpful after taken for approximately 2-3 weeks consistently and was typically for people with chronic heart burn. The fever reducer? Number one ingredient… can you guess? Acetaminophen. I immediately went over and we will say… intensely scolded… him about prescribing the one medication that I said under no circumstance could she take. He awkwardly took the medication and started GOOGLING to confirm what I had said the ingredients were. He insisted the only thing he could do was give her the injection to help, so I looked into that more. What did I find you may wonder? Banned in the US, is in the same category as morphine, and commonly causes severe blood clotting in thirty some percent of patients who take it. I was furious. While this whole argument was occurring, Izzy was discovering that their bathroom was one of the most foul we had seen on this entire trip, polished off with a non flushing toilet. I demanded they call us a taxi and we left. 

After the most discouraging hospital visit of our lives Izzy was incredibly uncomfortable, even more discouraged and exhausted. She attempted to lay back down while I discovered that in that mess of an attempt to find her help, I had somehow misplaced her, of all things, passport. In an effort to not completely panic I went out to the front desk and started going through the motions to contact the taxi drivers to check their backseats. No luck. This amazingly sweet front desk man personally drove me back to the hospital to check there for the passport. No luck. We physically TRACKED DOWN the first driver in town and asked him again. No luck. So we went back to the home stay and I returned to Iz. After a much needed phone call with Kathleen (for those of you who do not know Kathleen Graham, she is Izzy’s mom and one of the most supportive people I have ever had the blessing to meet) some calm was achieved, advice was given, love was shared and sleep was eventually found. 

The next day was full of figuring out all of the logistical aspects of what to do next. Izzy tried to get as much rest as possible and eat the very few things she could aka 2 small bananas and a singular piece of bread, and I tracked down safe foods for her, returned motorbikes, went back to the hospital to check for the missing passport, contacted the taxi drivers again, filed a police report with the tourism police in tiny vang vieng, booked train tickets for a few days from then to get to Vientiane to go to the embassy to get a new passport, booked a place for us to move to the next day so she could continue recovering… It was all so much. 

Finally the next day came, we were woken up by loud knocking on the door. What was it now? We couldn’t handle any more complications in this moment. But when I opened that door, there stood the front desk man exclaiming the best word he possibly could have, “Passport! Passport!”There he waved Izzy’s passport infront of me. Sure enough it was brought by the first taxi driver, he found it under his seat in the car. This had to mean things were looking up, Izzy was going to start feeling better and we were going to get the hell out of Vang Vieng. So, I tipped the taxi driver, packed us up and we moved to the new hotel. This was a mission in its own right where I got completely ripped off by a tuk tuk driver but was too worried about getting Iz to the next place to care. And what happened when we got there? I started to feel some madness occurring in my stomach. And then of course, I got the angry angry food poisoning as well. All in full with what you can imagine from food poisoning plus (what Iz also experienced) body aches, fever, chill, etc. This of course meant Izzy while still weak and recovering from her poisoning had to manage to take care of me who was now in the thick of it (thank god not as bad as hers), where she went and got me food, tried to cancel our train tickets, extend our stay at the new place, etc, etc. And what happens the next day? I thought I was feeling so much better in the morning, and then a little iffy that evening, but that night? BOOM food poisoning all over again! Which meant missing another train we had booked and the first night of our booked stay in Vientiane. 

All this to say… we had a rough time in Vang Vieng. We finally left a week after the day Izzy initially got food poisoning. We took the fast train to Vientiane and were on a flight to Hanoi, Vietnam a day later. So… now we  are here, Hanoi. 

Now that you have all the background, here’s how the hell I am feeling about it. That was an incredibly discouraging week. Laos was in fact incredibly beautiful but unfortunately for us, not a great experience. With the repeated tuk tuk scams, complications with transportation, fear around the Methanol poisonings, the hospital experience, and the whole food poisoning situation… it just was not our place. This is not to bash the country or it’s people as a whole, we just had a really tough experience and had other factors that made us want to leave. Did it make us consider calling it and coming home? Absolutely. Did all of the pictures of families together eating delicious SAFE thanksgiving meals make us incredibly homesick on top of our physical sickness? 100%. But we knew we would regret calling it quits before seeing Vietnam and the Thai islands. So, Izzy decided that the plane to Hanoi was a magic portal. You heard me. A magic portal. A portal where everything would start to go right one thing at a time, a portal that sent us into a dimension of peace and beauty, a portal that sent us to the land of delicious food that would do nothing but nourish our bodies and excite our pallets. And what has it been? A smooth travel day, a comfy bed in the airbnb, a few delicious meals, and a new chapter. 

I think as of now things are in fact looking up. Are there still ripples of lasting effects from the bomb that was the food poisoning itself. Yes, we know the mind and tummy are ridiculously interconnected and I am definitely feeling some of the physiological-chemical effects of my stomach attempting to recover from this incident. My serotonin waivers at times, energy and capacity are lower than usual, and emotions are harder to regulate right now. But this is not to say that it won’t get better with time. At least I will keep trying my best to keep my head up and food down when I can and give myself grace when I cannot. I am hoping this magic portal keeps doing it’s magic and can help my system find equilibrium again. But for now, I trust the portal and that my body is doing everything it can to recover. 

Thanks for checking in. Love and miss you all.

Love, 

Luna