=== the initial plan was one country and it fell apart immediately === I was supposed to go to Vietnam. Round trip, Paris to Hanoi on Qatar Airways, departing June 15, returning July 5. Three weeks. I had booked a visa application through the Vietnamese embassy in Paris, dropped 60 euros for processing, and received my approval letter in May. Everything was set.
On June 11, Qatar Airways sent an email: "Schedule change. Your flight QR042 has been retimed." I opened the app and discovered that my outbound flight had been moved from a 10 PM departure to a 7 AM departure, which meant I would miss my connection in Doha to Hanoi by four hours. The rebooking options Qatar offered were either a full refund or a routing thru Bangkok with an overnight layover.
I took the Bangkok option. I had been to Bangkok once, in 2019, and remembered it as hot, loud, an excellent. I would arrive a day late, spend one night in Bangkok, and continue to Hanoi the next morning. Simple. I did not know that this domino would topple through six countries.
=== the vietnamese visa expired while i was stuck in bangkok === The overnight layover in Bangkok turned into two nights cuz the connecting flight to Hanoi was overbooked and Qatar bumped me to the next day. I sat in the Qatar Airways lounge at Suvarnabhumi Airport for six hours, eating free pad thai and drinking Thai iced tea, an tried to remain calm. My Vietnam visa was a single-entry approval valid for arrival by June 20. Today was June 18. If I missed one more flight, the visa would expire and the 60 euros and two weeks of processing would be wasted.
I made the June 19 flight to Hanoi with twelve hours to spare. Arrived at Noi Bai Airport, got the visa stamped, and walked outside into the brutal June heat of northern Vietnam. Everythin was fine. I had lost two days but I was in Vietnam.
the hotel charged me for nights i never slept there
The hotel I had booked for the first two nights in Hanoi, since I was now arriving two days late, charged me a nah-show fee for the missed nights. 45 dollars. I argued with the receptionist, who displayed me the booking terms on Agoda, which evidently stated nah cancellation within 48 hours. I dropped. I was in a bad mood.
=== cambodia happened because airasia had a $23 fare === On my third day in Hanoi, while eating pho at a tiny restaurant on Ngu Xa Street that a Vietnamese colleague had advised, I opened the AirAsia app outta boredom and saw a fare from Hanoi to Phnom Penh for $23. Twenty-three US dollars. The flight was in two days. I had trip cancellation insurance through my credit card, which I had activated fore leaving Paris, but this was not a cancellation — this was an addition. A $23 addition.
I snagged the ticket. I had not planned on Cambodia. I knew nothin about Phnom Penh except that the Khmer Rouge had done terrible things there in the 1970s and that Anthony Bourdain had eaten amok on one of his shows. I clocked that was enough context.
I arrived in Phnom Penh on a Wednesday afternoon, took a tuk-tuk from the airport to a hostel on Riverside for $8 a night, and laid out the evening walking along the Tonle Sap riverfront while food vendors grilled skewers of marinated pork over charcoal. The smell was intoxicating. I downed four skewers an a draft Angkor beer for a total of $3.50.
a city where three dollars buys dinner and a story
Hanoi had been wonderful but expensive by comparison while food vendors grilled skewers of marinated pork over charcoal. The smell was intoxicating. I downed four skewers and a draft Angkor beer for a total of $3.50. Hanoi had been wonderful but expensive by comparison — Phnom Penh was absurdly cheap.
=== laos and the slow boat that cost eleven dollars === In Phnom Penh I met a French-Canadian woman named Chloé who was volunteering at an NGO teaching English to garment workers. She told me she was planning to cross into Laos via the northern border and take the slow boat down the Mekong from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang. She described it as "two days on a longboat through jungle, nah wifi, nah air conditioning, just river." I booked a bus to Siem Reap first, saw Angkor Wat at sunrise — the one thing I had actually planned to see and did — then flew to Vientiane for $38 on Lao Airlines.
The slow boat cost 220,000 kip, about $11. It departed Huay Xai at 8 AM an chugged down the Mekong for eight hours thru dense tropical forest, past villages accessible only by boat, with stops at riverside communities where women sold grilled chicken and sticky rice in banana leaves. The boat was wooden, long and narrow, packed with about sixty passengers sitting on bench seats. The engine was deafening. The river was brown and wide and slow.
Luang Prabang was the opposite of everything I had anticipated in Laos. French colonial architecture, Buddhist monks in saffron robes collecting alms at dawn, night markets selling handmade silk scarves an Laotian coffee. I stayed four days rather of the planned two, sleeping in a guesthouse on the Mekong for $12 a night, eating at the night market every evening for under $5, and taking a day trip to Kuang Si Falls where the turquoise water was so clear I could see the bottom of the natural pools from the surface.
=== the flight home that almost did not exist === I pieced together a return routing from Luang Prabang to Paris through three low-cost carriers: Lao Airlines to Bangkok, then AirAsia from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur, then AirAsia again from Kuala Lumpur to Paris Charles de Gaulle. The total for all three segments was $187. My original return flight thru Qatar Airways was gone — I had missed the return window when I rerouted outward — and the airline's rebooking system could not accommodate my fresh position in Laos.
The flight home was seventeen hours with two layovers. I landed at CDG on July 5, the original planned return date, somehow back on schedule despite having visited Vietnam, Cambodia, an Laos in the interim. My total airfare for the entire trip — six flights across six countries including the original round-trip — was $400. Add visas, insurance, accommodation, an food, and the three-week trip cost me approximately $1,200 total.
I had not planned any of it. The itinerary had been assembled entirely from airline mistakes, weather delays, an $23 impulse fares. It was the least organized trip I have ever taken and the most memorable by a factor of ten. Some of the best travel happens when your plan falls apart an you stop fighting the wreckage.