Pause and Wander

Dates: February 13-21, 2026

Places: Vientiane & Vang Vieng, Laos

We arrived in Laos with a plan. Sort of. We had accommodations booked, a rough sense of what we wanted to see, and the kind of flexible optimism that comes from six months on the road. What we didn’t have was any real understanding of how quickly things can go sideways in ways both hilarious and humbling.

Laos had other ideas about how our time here would go.

Welcome to Vientiane

The flight from Phuket went through Bangkok, where we navigated a warren of airport hallways that felt like backstage areas before finally making it to the international terminal. The girls discovered the lounge dessert collection, we found the open bar, and by the time we needed to head to our gate, we were all buzzed and full to bursting.

The AirAsia plane to Vientiane rattled so much during takeoff that Shaina and Max looked nervously at one another, questioning our life choices. The whole plane sounded like it just might fall to pieces as it accelerated down the runway. Spoiler: we didn’t fall out of the sky.

Immigration was super quick with our e-visas ready to go. (Lesson learned!)  We caught a LOCA – Laos’ version of Grab – to our hotel, a small guesthouse in the center that held our one-bedroom mini apartment with a private bathroom and AC. Not a whole lot of frills past that, but we were only there for two nights and that was all we needed.

Dinner was at a local hole-in-the-wall that we were surprised even had a name: Ms. Pouy’s Lao Grilled Meat. Twenty skewers of grilled pork, one sausage, spicy noodle salad, and a very spicy papaya salad. We paired it all with a couple of bottles of Beer Lao. Fun fact: Beer Lao Lager was the first full beer of any kind that Shaina drank—not this trip, but back when we were here in 2007—when cold bottled water was nonexistent but you could get cold beer!

What War Really Looks Like

The next morning we grabbed breakfast at Common Grounds Cafe & Bakery – French toast, an American breakfast, a breakfast burrito, plus a fantastic Americano and a chai. Then Max mapped out a walking tour that very quickly pivoted into a Tuk Tuk tour since it was so hot and dusty in Vientiane.

We started at Wat Sisaket, Vientiane’s oldest surviving temple built in 1818, famous for its cloister walls lined with thousands of tiny Buddha statues – over 6,800 of them in fact – creating an almost overwhelming display of devotion that has somehow survived wars and invasions that destroyed most of the city’s other historic temples.

We hired a Tuk Tuk driver to take us to three more stops for 300,000 kip – about $14 USD. On any day this seemed like a steal, but on this particular day with the crazy heat, it was like highway robbery in our favor.

Next was Pha That Luang, Laos’ most important national monument and the country’s most sacred Buddhist stupa. Built in the 16th century and covered in gold leaf, this massive three-tiered structure appears on the national seal and currency. We did a lap around the giant golden stupa, snapping photos and admiring the craftsmanship.

Then Patuxai, Vientiane’s own Arc de Triomphe-inspired victory monument built in the 1960s to commemorate those who fought for independence from France – ironically constructed with cement originally donated by the Americans for building a new airport, which is why locals sometimes jokingly call it the “vertical runway.” We climbed to the top for 360-degree views of the city.

As we exited into the hot afternoon, an ice cream shop appeared across the street like magic. We hopped in and bought two cups. Just what the moment needed.

Then came our final stop: the COPE Visitor Center. COPE is a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping survivors of unexploded ordnances in Laos, a country that still holds the record as the most heavily bombed nation per capita in history after the U.S. dropped over 2 million tons of ordnance during the Secret War from 1964 to 1973.

This ended up being a really important stop. It opened a dialogue with the girls about what war really looks like.

In movies and shows and even in some of the books they’ve read, the portrayal of war and battle is more glorious than gruesome. The pictures of the survivors of UXOs shook the girls. It shook Shaina and Max too.

The cluster bombs that were dropped on the Ho Chi Minh Trail were devastating. Each cluster bomb contained hundreds of smaller bomblets designed to scatter over a wide area, and approximately 30% of them failed to detonate on impact. An estimated 80 million unexploded bomblets, or “bombies” as they’re known, are still scattered across the Laotian countryside. They continue to kill and maim people – particularly farmers and children – to this day.

We made a donation to the center, happy to help support their work and glad that we could impress upon our kids the importance of striving for peace.

The Hair Disaster

While we were at the COPE Center, Shaina had made an appointment at a hair salon for a cut and color. What she thought would be a simple touchup turned into something else entirely. Something was obviously lost in translation because she ended up with a circle of really darkly dyed hair on top of her head that looked more or less like she was wearing a yarmulke. She was not pleased.

What was supposed to be a 90-minute hair cut turned into a 4-hour “OMG please fix my hair” marathon. When she finally got back to the hotel, Max was bracing himself for the worst. But as she walked in the door he couldn’t help but think, “Wow, that’s a great haircut you got!” If she hadn’t been texting him throughout her ordeal, he would never have guessed that things had gone so far off the rails. Crisis averted. Hair looked great. Time to move on to Vang Vieng.

The Road to Vang Vieng

Our “taxi” turned out to be a tiny Tuk Tuk – and not an empty one. There were already two travelers crammed in the back with all their luggage. Did they expect all four of us to load up with all of our gear too? Yes. Yes they did. A bit of luggage Tetris and some body contortions later and we all fit for what was mercifully only a five-minute ride to the minibus pickup spot.

Then came the next surprise. We all had various images in our heads of what a minibus was – maybe something like one of the nice passenger vans that can hold nine people relatively comfortably. That is not what a minibus is.

A minibus is just a touch bigger than a passenger van, but instead of holding a comfortable nine people it squeezes in 26 people very uncomfortably, with all the luggage that didn’t fit in the trunk stacked like a Jenga tower at the front.

The four of us were the last to board and got stuck with the very last row. We were fearing the worst, but it actually turned out to be not so bad. The reason? The road from Vientiane to Vang Vieng is completely unrecognizable from what Shaina and Max traveled 15 years ago. The road we were expecting was a winding, bumpy, pothole-filled mess. As part of China’s sweeping Belt and Road Initiative, Laos has seen massive infrastructure investment over the past two decades. What was once a grueling multi-hour ordeal on crumbling roads is now a fast and smooth drive.

A little less than two hours later we arrived in Vang Vieng, a small scenic town nestled in a valley along the Nam Song River and surrounded by dramatic karst limestone mountains. Once notorious on the backpacker circuit for its anything-goes party scene, the town has evolved into a more family-friendly destination while still retaining its natural beauty and outdoor adventure appeal.

We checked into Paradise Mountain Resort – included breakfast, a pool, an on-site restaurant, and a room with comfy beds and super cold AC. What more could you want?

The rest of the day we chilled out at the hotel working on homework, journaling, and trip planning. We were all feeling a bit sluggish. An early dinner at the on-site restaurant was okay but nothing to get excited about. Then the girls begged to go in the pool and launched in with cannonballs as soon as the shade covered the water.

The Police Scam

A perfectly lazy day. Until…the paramotors started taking off. Paramotors are parasails attached to a seat and propelled with a large fan—think parachute meets swamp boat—often with loud repurposed unmuffled motors powering them.  They took off from the grass field right behind our hotel, and the first few captured the attention of our girls and elicited many ooohs and aaaahs. Immediately, we all imagined ourselves in the sky, and began planning for when we’d all take our turn. However, after fifty seven of them taking off, the sound was more than grating. They were almost indescribably loud, and there were dozens of them, each taking off and landing in 15-minute increments, shuttling tourists into the sky for their brief aerial adventure. This became the norm at our hotel for the remainder of our week-long stay: 2 to 3 hours of a deafening rumble, every dawn and dusk. It became yet another good lesson for us: hotels can look serene in photographs but that may not tell the whole story.  In the end, we developed a disgruntled hatred for these loud flying machines, and along with our growing concern about their safety, we all changed our minds about wanting to partake. 

(Vang Vieng follow-up: as we write this blog post, a couple weeks after leaving Paramotor Hell, we heard through the travel grapevine that there had been an “aviation accident” at that paramotor location, prompting all aerial activity to cease for the foreseeable future. I guess our instincts were correct!) 

The next morning we rented motorbikes for the week at 150,000 kip per day – about $7.50 USD – which felt like a solid negotiating win. Scooters are essential in Vang Vieng. The town is spread out, the best restaurants aren’t walkable in the heat, and most of the area’s attractions require wheels.

Max’s sense of direction, however, is not know for its infallibility. It is frequently wrong.

After gearing everyone up for our first ride, he confidently set off toward a nearby restaurant. Within six minutes he realized he’d turned the wrong way and Google Maps had rerouted us on a 15-minute detour. He signaled to Shaina, flipped a U-turn, and we headed back toward the pedestrian bridge to cross the Nam Song River into the center of town.

At some point (we still aren’t entirely clear when), the road we were on turned into a one-way street. We were going the wrong way. This is not as obvious as it sounds. Cars and scooters routinely drive on the wrong side of the street in Southeast Asia and Max figured this was just more of the same.

Then a group of four police officers jumped out blowing whistles and pulled us over, asking us to get off the bikes and hand over our licenses.

We sat down in tiny plastic chairs while the boss officer showed us a diagram of what a one-way sign looks like.  Our girls looked terrified, and quickly went straight to the worst-case scenario: “are you guys going to jail?”  But we were far less concerned—we’d seen this movie before. The whole scenario felt a little staged. A little too convenient. We both knew we were going to have to pay some “extortion money” – we just weren’t sure how much. The boss officer said he was doing us a favor by only charging a fine of 100,000 kip – about $5 USD. Max bit his tongue, paid the fee, and fumed inside. The $5 wasn’t a big deal, but getting taken advantage of, especially when you are already frustrated with a navigational blunder, was salt in the wound.

As we stepped back into the street to remount our scooters, a large group of foreigners on scooters also heading the wrong way were getting the whistles blown at them and pulled over.  Good luck guys!

We commiserated with their situation—such is how it goes sometimes while traveling. It’s never fun, but thankfully it doesn’t happen too often.

We eventually made it to Happy Mango and ordered duck curry, minced pork larb, and drunken noodles. Everything was super tasty, the service was friendly, and the passion fruit mango smoothie we had for dessert was one of the best yet.

The police scam? Water under the bridge. Mostly.

The Birthday GI Bug

A few days later, Max turned 42.

The universe, apparently, had thoughts about that.

He started the morning with a HIIT workout and hotel breakfast, then quietly took stock of how he was feeling. Not great, if he’s honest. Not terrible either, but a low-grade funk from the day before hadn’t fully lifted and he couldn’t summon much enthusiasm for doing anything grand.

He doesn’t tend to make a big production out of birthdays anyway. A good meal, good conversation, an intimate setting – that’s all he’s ever really wanted.

We found a Chinese noodle restaurant that stopped Max in his tracks the moment he spotted it. It looked almost identical to a place he used to call “Noodle Spot Number One” back when he was living in Chengdu in 2007. Pure nostalgia pulled us through the door—the Chinese owner didn’t speak a lick of Lao or English, and we knew we were in for a treat.

Laos has seen enormous Chinese investment over the past few decades and Chinese nationals are everywhere as a result, so it wasn’t surprising to hear the owner speaking Mandarin to some other patrons across the room. When he came to our table Max decided to order in Chinese.

Now, let’s be clear: Max’s Chinese is pretty garbage. But he does know how to order a noodle bowl and a cold beer, which turns out to be all the Chinese you really need in a noodle restaurant. The man’s face absolutely lit up. The other guests turned to look. For one brief, shining moment Max was a celebrity. Then the owner started talking back to him at full speed as if Max had just claimed fluency, and he had to wave his hands and explain – in whatever broken Mandarin he could muster – that his Chinese was, in fact, very bad.

The owner laughed, and then just kept going anyway, a cheerful torrent of completely incomprehensible Chinese while Max sat there grinning and nodding like an idiot. We all thought it was hilarious. It was exactly the kind of small, warm, human moment that makes travel worth it. And the dumplings and noodle bowls did not disappoint. 

From there we made our way to a quaint riverside cafe called Golden Bamboo for the main birthday event. It’s a step up from the places we’d been eating – a bit more polished, but with genuine local character rather than tourist gloss. We shared a bottle of real French rosé. The girls had smoothies. We all played cards, which these days means gin, often watching Arya win repeatedly with serene confidence.

The afternoon was mostly lovely. Mostly.

The girls got into a tiff at some point – we honestly can’t even remember what sparked it – but it was bad enough that Finlee eventually buried her face in her arms and went quiet in that particular way that means she’s done. It took a smoothie and a reset to bring her back.

Dinner itself was genuinely excellent. Spring rolls, sticky rice, a falafel and hummus plate, pad Thai – everything landed. If the day had ended there it would have been a decent birthday.

But the day did not end there.

The stomach grumbles had started in earnest by mid-afternoon. Not yet alarming, just a low rumble of warning. Unfortunately, by the time we got back to the hotel, the stomach cramps had arrived in force, and what followed was a long and deeply unflattering night of the entire family rotating in and out of the bathroom with the grim efficiency of a shift schedule.

A GI bug, proper and thorough and committed to ruining whatever remained of the occasion.

Happy birthday to Max.

Here’s the thing though: you can’t take it personally. Sometimes these things happen on your birthday, and there is nothing to do but laugh at it.

If anything, the day handed him something useful to carry forward. The Chinese noodle restaurant almost didn’t happen, and it was such a fun trip into nostalgia, not to mention the delicious noodles. That’s worth remembering. (And of note, we’re pretty sure the GI bug came from a questionable roadside burger joint from the previous day, not the noodle shop.)

4×4 with Erkin

While everyone was recovering from the GI bug, we were also in the middle of making a big adventure planning decision for our entire trip. As mentioned previously, we have decided to finish the final legs of our trip with the Silk Road, the Caucasus, the Balkans, and then home. But the route itself wasn’t the only thing we needed to committed to, but also what adventures to do there. While sitting at Hom Cafe watching the girls work through homework, we pulled the trigger on something that Max had been researching and negotiating.

A fourteen-day 4×4 expedition through Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Not the tourist version. The raw, unfiltered heart of Central Asia. Martian-colored deserts. High alpine lakes. Mountain passes that test the vehicle and the nerves. Nights in nomadic yurts. A remote Soviet ghost town somewhere near the Chinese border. The goal is to get completely clear of the tourist trail and see what this part of the world actually looks like.

Max found a guide named Erkin on Indyguide.com, and after many long text conversations in broken English, we liked everything about what he was offering. And that was that—we paid the deposit, and now it’s real.

This is the adventurous soul of what we set out to do when we left home.

Finding Our Pace

Between the police scam, the birthday bug, and booking our route through Central Asia, something else was happening in Vang Vieng. We were settling in.

The girls established a homework routine. If they finish everything by Saturday, they earn extra spending money. It lit a fire under them to stay focused during each session.

We found our spots. Chinese Noodle Restaurant for dumplings. Kiwi Kitchen for comfort food. Hom Cafe for smoothies and air conditioning.

We also made some new friends. A French family living in Singapore showed up at the pool one afternoon. The mom works in renewable energy, the dad in telecommunications, and they have three kids who immediately hit it off with Arya and Finlee. Max got to practice his French. The girls got to practice being kids with other kids.

And we started doing things that felt properly adventurous.

One morning we finally made it to Nan Xay viewpoint for sunrise. We’d tried once before but the GI bug had other plans. This time we were up at 5:30, out the door in the dark on motorbikes, pointed toward a limestone karst peak on the western edge of the valley.

Nobody had warned us that Laos gets this cold at night. The air was sharp and biting and we were very underdressed. We rode with our chins tucked and pushed on. The first half of the road was smooth. The second half looked like a cratered moonscape. We spent fifteen minutes weaving between potholes before pulling into the parking area.

The trail started with cement stairs poured into the mountainside, gave way to metal steps, then rough cuts in dry clay soil. But the higher we climbed the more the mountain shed any pretense of a maintained path. The final stretches were less hiking and more low-grade rock climbing.

Twenty-five minutes after we started we pulled ourselves onto the summit and were rewarded with 360-degree views of the valley, karst mountains stacked endlessly in every direction, and absolutely no sunrise whatsoever.

A thick blanket of cloud sat over the entire sky without a single gap for golden light to sneak through. We stood there, panting and grinning, and looked at each other. Meh. What can you do?

The clouds that robbed us of the sunrise did give us something in return – soft, diffuse morning light that turned out to be genuinely beautiful for portraits. We took our fill of photos, got some drone footage, and headed back down.

Big high fives all around and then the whole family put our hands in the middle, one on top of another, and counted down before throwing them up in the air. Teammmmmm SharXee!

Our nickname given to us by college friends started as “ShaX” when we were dating, and has since grown to include the girls as they arrived.  Now it’s the signature move that closes out every small adventure.

Loud, a little silly, and completely ours.

The Sketchy Lagoon Park

A few days later we rode 11 kilometers west to Vangvieng Interpark, a lagoon attraction that can only be described as… odd.

It’s basically what happens when someone decides to build a water park in their backyard without any of the polish or safety regulations you’d find in the West. Concrete dinosaurs scattered around the property. A cave with Buddhist statues and some impressive stalactites. A big lagoon with a zip line, a rope swing, and a 5-meter diving platform.

The girls were timid at first. It looked rough around the edges. A bit sketchy. But did that stop us from going on the zip line, swinging on the rope swing, or plunging from high atop the platform into the lagoon below? No way.

Arya led the charge off the zip line with Finlee right on her heels. Then we all went off the rope swing before Arya and Max tempted fate from the platform. Shaina documented the moment. This place is a lot more fun than it looks. There aren’t a ton of things to do there but for 90 minutes we splashed about and had a blast.

What Laos Taught Us

This is real travel. Not the Instagram version.

The version with police scams and stomach bugs and sketchy lagoon parks with concrete dinosaurs. The version where you book a wild Central Asian expedition while rotating through bathroom duty. The version where the sunrise is hidden by clouds but you’re still grinning at the top of a mountain with your family.

The version where a 42nd birthday gets hijacked by a GI bug, but you still remember the Chinese noodle restaurant as one of the best moments of the trip.

The version where your wife’s simple hair touchup turns into a 4-hour crisis that somehow ends with a great haircut.

The version where visiting a center about unexploded bombs opens a real conversation with your daughters about what war actually does to people.

Laos gave us all of that. The beautiful and the imperfect and the absurd, all mixed together in ways we couldn’t have planned if we’d tried.

And somewhere in the middle of it, we made it work and had a great time.

Tomorrow we head deeper into Laos. The road ahead is clear. Kazakhstan is waiting. The Silk Road is calling.

Team SharXee is ready.