Pause and Wander

Dates: March 22-23, 2026

Place: Naxao, Laos

We were up at 6:45, moving fast. Quick workout, faster pack, breakfast at the hotel where we discovered that golden watermelon is our new favorite thing, then downstairs to catch our taxi to the train station.

Except there was no taxi.

The hotel had simply forgotten to order it, despite the reservation we’d made the day before, and despite verbal confirmation that very morning. We were already on the wrong side of the river, which meant any route to the train station was going to take a while, and the margin we’d left ourselves was uncomfortably thin.

We ran out to the road and struggled to flag down a tuk-tuk driver at the early morning hour. Minutes were flying by way too fast. We finally hailed a Tuk Tuk who took one look at our situation and drove like a man possessed. Google had the trip at twelve minutes. He did it in eight, threading through traffic with focused aggression.

We pulled into the station just in time to watch our train pull away from the platform.

There is a specific kind of hollow feeling that comes with missing a train.

We stood there with our luggage and came to terms with the hollow pit in our stomachs. Being a no-show means forfeiting your ticket, no refund, no grace period. So we also got to buy four new ones for the evening departure. More expensive. Many hours away.

The day, suddenly, was wide open.

Silver Linings

It took about thirty seconds to find the first one.

We’d been hoping return to Happy Mango restaurant for a few days and we’d never managed to get in. Now we had nothing but time. So we found ourselves standing on the sidewalk in front of Happy Mango waiting for them to open while sipping cold Kronenbourg 1664 Blancs. There we realized we’d made another huge blunder — the ukulele was still sitting in our hotel room. However, insert perfect silver lining number two, missing the train meant we could go get it.

After finishing another fantastic meal, the ladies got working on their journals while Max set about reacquiring our forgotten uke. The rideshare app showed no available scooters, and paying 120,000 kip for a taxi back to the hotel felt like adding insult to injury, so he walked. It was drizzling lightly, overcast, and just cool enough to make it pleasant rather than punishing.

There’s something a motorbike can’t give you that a walk always does. The pace forces you to actually see where you are. Vang Vieng at walking speed is a fascinating collision: the quiet rhythms of Laos running headlong into the preferences of whoever happens to be visiting, with Chinese investment adding a third layer to the whole mashup. Signs in Chinese are as common as signs in English.

Max walked, looked, thought, pondered, mused, and arrived back at the hotel feeling better than he had any right to given the morning.

He returned, ukulele in hand, to find Shaina with a mango pineapple smoothie and a mango sticky rice waiting for him. There are few problems in life that cannot be at least partially addressed by mango sticky rice.

We spent the rest of our time at Happy Mango playing cards and sketching out the next blog post until they closed at three. The universe forcing us to leave early for the station felt like a personal favor.

We hired a tuk-tuk, arrived with over an hour to spare, and settled in. The girls cracked open their books. Finlee deep in The Hunger Games, Arya working through A Series of Unfortunate Events. They became immediately unreachable. There is nothing better than watching kids disappear into a book during exactly the kind of interstitial travel moment that would otherwise involve screens and glazed expressions.

The Best Train in Laos

We boarded our train on time with zero drama whatsoever. Amazing what happens when you leave your self plenty of time to make travel deadlines! Once seated, we had to substantially revise our assumptions of what this train was going to be like. I think China has earned a big tip of the hat on this one. 

The Laos-China Railway opened in December 2021 as part of a $6 billion infrastructure project. Roughly sixty percent of the route from Vang Vieng to Luang Prabang passes through tunnels and bridges carved through some of the most rugged terrain in the region. The express trains run at 160 kilometers per hour, which is how a journey that once took the better part of a day by road and plagued by nauseating and potholed roads, now only takes fifty minutes with barely perceptible turbulence.  

We knew all of this intellectually. What we did not expect was to board what is genuinely one of the nicest trains we had ever been on.

Modern, spotless, whisper-smooth, moving through the karst landscape at speed while the mountains scrolled past the windows like a painting being slowly unrolled. First class tickets were $12 each.

We had rolled our eyes a little at the idea of first class in Laos. We take it back entirely.

Heading to the farm stay 

We pulled into Luang Prabang just after six and walked out into the full circus of the station forecourt. Taxis, minibuses, tuk-tuks, and vans circling with the patient menace of people who know you need them more than they need you.

The first driver who approached us quoted 1,000,000 kip for the eighteen-kilometer ride to our guesthouse. The Loca app suggested it should cost closer to 525,000. We started negotiating, which mostly meant standing there while various drivers talked to each other and a ripple of activity spread outward in ways we didn’t fully understand.

Then a quiet man approached from the edge of the crowd. Better English than anyone else we’d spoken to, a calm manner, and a very specific opening line, “You want to go to Naxao? That is my home. I’ll take you for 300,000 kip.”   Sold. 

His name was Nat and knew our guesthouse host by name. He led us not to the battered tuk-tuk we were bracing for but instead to a clean, modern nine-seater van.

Some days the universe takes something away in the morning and gives something better back in the evening.

The drive wound through Luang Prabang and then briefly stopped at a local rice vendor, a large shed filled with round bins of every variety of rice imaginable, all labeled by hand with price and quality. Nat moved through the stall the way you move through a place you’ve been a hundred times: checking the rice by feel, nodding to himself, exchanging what we assume was small talk with the vendor who scooped two kilos into a bag with practiced ease and tied it off without looking. It was the most mundane errand and we watched it the way you watch someone do something they’re genuinely good at. 

That’s the thing about traveling slowly. You get to see the ordinary life of a place, not just its highlights.

Rice Paddies and Renovation Dreams

We reached Nakoun Cafe and Homestay as the light was fading and were met by our host Onkeo, a cheerful man in his forties who waved off our luggage and pointed us toward an elevated, cushion-filled dining platform. We ordered pork larb, pad Thai, chicken with basil, and a Luang Prabang salad. Everything arrived hot, fresh, and nearly simultaneously, which in Southeast Asia qualifies as something of a miracle. All of it was delicious. 

Then we found our room, and reality arrived.

We had known this was a rustic homestay, but rustic didn’t quite do it justice. A bamboo box perched over a rice paddy, a mattress on the floor, a mosquito net, no fan, and a distant shared bathroom where all of the mosquitos in Laos appeared to be hiding. We’d spent time in places like this all over Laos fifteen years ago and it felt normal then. The problem now was the contrast between where we’d just come from—clean hotel rooms, air conditioning, a pool—and where we were at this moment.

The night air was completely still. We had just eaten a late dinner. The mattress was hard, holes in the sheets, the pillow thick and firm, and the temperature showed no intention of dropping.

It was going to be a long, hot, mostly sleepless night.

But in the morning, in daylight, this place revealed itself as a study in beautiful contradictions.

The guesthouse overlooks rice paddies that are genuinely postcard perfect. Still greenish despite the dry season, framed by gentle hills, the kind of view that photographers are always chasing. The cafe is a series of low traditional wooden structures with cushions facing that same view, the whole setup practically designed for long mornings with coffee and nowhere to be.

It is, in concept, exactly the kind of place we all love.

And then you notice the mouse droppings along the windowsill ledges. The dried food spilled by previous guests on the cafe cushions. The cushions themselves, stuffing drifting out of the torn corners, shredded by the cats that roam the property with the confident air of owners. 

None of it was bad enough to leave. And we want to be clear that at $7 a night per room, which is not a typo, our expectations needed to be actively kept in check. 

But that’s precisely what kept getting at Max. The bones here are so good. The view alone is worth five times the price.

He spent an embarrassing portion of the day mentally renovating the place. A deep clean here, some new cushion covers there, a little attention paid to the ledges. For under $100 in improvements this property could charge $50 a night and have a waitlist.

This is a well-worn hobby of his. He has strong opinions about how guesthouses should be run, formed entirely from the comfort of being a guest and completely untempered by any actual experience of running one. Peak armchair expertise.

One day he’ll either put his money where his mouth is and open a hostel, or he’ll accept that he is simply a very opinionated tourist.

Possibly both.

A Day of Rice Paddies and Goats

We more or less set up camp in the cafe lounge for the entire day. Shaina is coming down with a cold, Max is just climbing out of one, nobody slept particularly well, and the collective energy for adventure was approximately zero.

We took one short walk, about two kilometers around the rice paddy fields. The girls were delighted to discover a small herd of goats that had been set loose to graze on the weeds filling the dry paddies since last year’s harvest. The goats were playful and curious and completely unbothered by human attention. Arya and Finlee spent a good twenty minutes just watching them hop around, calling to each other, and generally being goats.

In the wet season this place must be explosively green and alive. Right now it’s beautiful in a more muted way, everything softened by the dry season dust that has settled over the landscape like a thin blanket. Still lovely. Just quieter.

Otherwise, we planted ourselves on the cushions, faced the view, and worked. We knocked out logistics for Georgia, Armenia, Romania, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. The goal is to get the planning behind us entirely so the rest of the trip can just be the trip.

One meal drifted into the next snack, the next beer, the next round of work, until the sun started dropping and we called it a day.

The food here earns a solid grade. It comes out fast, it’s genuinely tasty, and the setting elevates everything.

What We’re Learning

Here’s the thing we keep coming back to: this is how people live.

Not the guesthouse owners specifically, but the broader truth that while we’re mentally renovating cushions and complaining about the lack of a fan, millions of people in this region live in conditions far more challenging than a $7-a-night homestay with mouse droppings and a stunning view.

We have the luxury of being uncomfortable for a few nights and then moving on. We have the luxury of having opinions about how things could be better. We have the luxury of choice.

That doesn’t mean the mouse droppings aren’t real or that the lack of a fan doesn’t make for a rough sleep. But it does mean keeping perspective about what we’re actually experiencing versus what we’re used to.

The best part of this place isn’t the cushions or the rooms or even the food. It’s sitting on a platform overlooking rice paddies while our daughters watch goats play and we knock out months of trip planning with cold beers in hand.

It’s Nat stopping for rice on the way home because that’s just part of his evening routine and we got to witness it.

It’s missing a train in the morning and catching the nicest train we’ve ever been on in the afternoon.

It’s mango sticky rice as a cure for travel frustrations.

It’s walking through Vang Vieng at a human pace instead of a motorbike blur.

The uncomfortable mattress and the mosquitoes and the heat are part of the package. So are the rice paddies and the goats and the view and the $7 price tag that makes all of this possible.

Tomorrow we’ll sleep better. Or we won’t. Either way, we’ll wake up to that view again.

And honestly, that’s not a bad deal.