We arrived at Kuala Lumpur Airport after a five hour flight where we met Cliff, our expedition leader. We then walked a short but hot distance to our hotel.
The rooms were lovely but very small with the bed taking up most of the room. We tried to sleep until 4 am then got onto our three hour flight on a tiny plane to Vientiane, Laos. Where we attempted to sort out some of the accommodation and transport. Unfortunately as we were getting our Laos Visas, we realised a male student had misplaced (lost) his passport. While Miss Nottle, Miss Posner and Cliff were trying to sort this all out we hung around the airport. One snippet of information would come through and then another...little did we know we would be there for nearly 7 hours. To fill the time, we ended up doing all our planning for the next few days ahead...this soon moved on to us playing card games, while some of the boys decided to buy small nerf guns to shoot at each other. Luckily after many boring hours and long phone calls the 'student' was allowed through immigration into Laos. It was touch and go for a time, but the teachers did a good job in persuading the authorities and all is well again!
Following some investigations for transport into the city and some group discussion we decided to take “Tuk tuks” down to our accommodation in the city centre. Tuk tuks are sort of like motorbikes with seating area in the back and are an experience not to be missed. After spending nearly a whole day in a very small airport seeing the busy dirty roads filled with smiling people on motorbikes carrying up to 4 people was a great privilege.
The road from the airport into the city looked a little rundown with half built houses and buildings but also with beautiful temples. Some Lovely fragrances and some not so lovely fragrances filled our nostrils. After being dropped off by mistake at a hotel with a very similar name t o ours we ended up walking to our actual hotel (Ed. This happens all the time folks...tell the Tuk tuk driver where you want to go and the answer is always "yes yes I know"), which is quite nice and is housing many other world challenge teams from various parts of Australia. Later we went to a restaurant for dinner, where most of us tucked into delicious fried rice. Following our splendid meal we all went to the local Night Markets, which was an amazing experience where most of us bought things we don’t really need already! (Ed. This is also normal folks :-))
It's been quite a stressful start to our trip surely it can only get better from now on...
By Mikhaila S and Michaela J :)
By Mikhaila S and Michaela J :)
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