Text and photos by Char Vilchez
I’m somewhere between Luang Prabang and Vang Vieng, gripping my seat as our van bounces violently through another dusty road in Laos. Outside the window: mountains, dirt roads, and long stretches of nothingness.
Every few minutes, I check Google Maps. Still nowhere.
Somewhere between reciting my third Our Father and alternating between Hail Mary and Aba Ginoong Maria—just in case the man upstairs is bilingual—I caught myself wondering: Shouldn’t this kind of questioning stop in your 40s?
I wasn’t talking about the van anymore.
A few months before this trip, I had resigned from what I thought was my dream job and somehow found myself back at the company where I first learned public relations. I’ve been away from them for almost 12 years. It felt full circle. The people were kinder. The culture was healthier. The workload? Apparently, inner peace comes with a hundred unread emails.
Around the same time, my best friend became a mom.
I am genuinely happy for her. But if you’re a woman in your 40s, someone else’s milestone has an annoying way of making you audit your own life.
She was buying baby things I’d never heard of. I was comparing hotel room prices and seat sales and checking our weekend events for my next side quests (as Gen Zs call it).
I don’t know if I want children—and it’s a long discussion, especially at my age. But I found myself grieving something I couldn’t explain. Not motherhood. I was grieving the possibility that we’d slowly stop relating to each other. That motherhood would become her world while mine would be filled with random spontaneous of things to do outside of work over the weekend.
Whenever life starts asking questions, I don’t have answers to, I already know my coping mechanism.
I book a trip.
This time, it was Laos. Why Laos?
Simple. I wanted to ride a hot air balloon.
Cappadocia had broken my heart a few years earlier after weather cancelled my flight. Laos felt like a second chance, and considerably cheaper. Sometimes life-changing decisions really do begin with airfare sales. (Says the girl who takes the P15 BGC bus everyday to One Ayala going home to save up for a trip!)
Luang Prabang was everything I hoped it would be: sleepy cafés, French colonial buildings, and a pace so slow it almost felt rebellious. I could have happily stayed there for days.
But my itinerary, and the adventure of riding that hot air balloon,were waiting in Vang Vieng.
Every travel blog recommended taking the Laos-China Railway to head there from Luang Prabang. Naturally, I ignored all of them.
The ‘comfortable tourist van’ that strengthened my prayer life again
Instead, I booked what an online travel agency described as a “comfortable tourist van” with hotel pickup and hotel drop-off. Besides, I also wouldn’t want to be stuck with mainlanders inside the train. (I am so sorry if I sound judgmental).
This is also how Netflix documentaries begin. You can insert famous TikTok Trend with the Violin introduction here as I take a seat.
The van was late. We squeezed in passengers until every seat was occupied. Then the real adventure started.
The roads were brutal. Every few minutes I was launched into the air and my head would hit the window. I reached for a seatbelt. There wasn’t one.
The Catholic school girl in me resurfaced.
Our Father.
Hail Mary.
Ama Namin.
Aba Ginoong Maria.
In between those prayers, I started questioning a lot of things about my life again.
Then the driver pulled over beside what looked like an abandoned structure. A few minutes later, he returned carrying a heavily taped box roughly the size of a quarter of a balikbayan box and tossed it directly at my feet.
Silence.
The woman beside me looked at me. I looked back.
Neither of us said a word. But we were definitely asking the same question: “What the heck?” That silent eye contact was probably the deepest human connection I made during the entire van ride.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get stranger, the driver stopped again to pick up a Lao family. The van was already full. Not “one seat left” full. Pinoy family reunion road-trip full or UV Express going to Antipolo during rush hour.
Just when I thought things couldn’t get stranger, the driver stopped again to pick up a Lao family. The van was already full
Somehow everyone squeezed in. The little boy landed between two confused European tourists while his parents found separate corners of the van.
Nobody complained. At that point we’d all accepted that this vehicle operated under an entirely different interpretation of transportation.
Whatever was posted on that online travel agency site missed out a lot of details on this service.
I caught the eye of the same woman I’d silently trauma-bonded with over the mystery box earlier. No words. Just another look.
Except this time, I wasn’t just amused anymore. I felt bad for the family. They looked just as confused and honestly, just as terrified as the rest of us.
For what felt like the hundredth time, I checked Google Maps. It looked like we were finally approaching Vang Vieng.
Every bump came with a free existential crisis.
Then, without warning, the van’s brakes screeched to a stop in front of what looked like a tiny roadside shop, something that could easily pass for our local sari-sari store. There were barely any houses nearby, and the next establishment seemed to be almost a kilometer away.
The driver jumped out, yanked the sliding door open with force, and spoke to the family in Lao.
The parents simply nodded, gathered their son, and climbed out. The driver shut the door and drove away.
Maybe that tiny roadside shop was exactly where they were supposed to get off. To me, though, it still looked like the middle of nowhere.
Vang Vieng may be beautiful, but it just wasn’t for me.
A few minutes later, I knew we’d finally reached Vang Vieng, not because of a welcome sign, but because, miraculously, the roads had become smooth and there were actual driveways.
The driver, however, still didn’t bother bringing any of us to our hotels. He simply unloaded everyone in the middle of town along with our bags—without saying a word.
Honestly, after everything we’d survived together, I half expected us to hug goodbye. But that was just me being clingy.
Yes, I finally rode the hot air balloon. Yes, it was magical. (I did write another essay about it already). But this essay isn’t about floating over Laos.
It’s about what happened before—and after.
After two days, I realized Vang Vieng simply wasn’t for me. It was louder, busier, and more chaotic than I expected. I missed Luang Prabang.
So I did what every stubborn traveler eventually does. I admitted everyone else had been right. I booked the train.
The biggest surprise of the trip? Laos has one of the nicest train stations I’ve ever seen.
Within minutes I knew I’d made the correct decision. The station was huge and spotless. The train was fast, quiet, and efficient, gliding through mountains that had taken our van an eternity to navigate. Watching Laos pass outside my window, something clicked.
The van and the train weren’t just two ways of crossing the country.
They were two versions of Laos itself. One still rooted in old villages, winding roads, and a slower way of life. The other racing toward the future with impressive infrastructure and new possibilities.
It struck me that my 40s felt exactly the same. You’re carrying an older version of yourself while trying to become someone new.
Maybe that’s why this trip stayed with me.
Not because of the hot air balloon. Not even because of the van ride from hell. But because somewhere between questioning my career, worrying about my friendships, and surviving Southeast Asia’s most terrifying “comfortable tourist van,” I realized something.
Throughout the trip, the person I messaged most wasn’t another traveler. It wasn’t someone I’d met along the way.
It was my best friend. The new mom I had spent weeks convincing myself I was slowly losing.
Turns out, the only person creating distance between us was me. Life didn’t make us drift apart. It had simply given us different stories to tell each other.
By the time I was back in Luang Prabang, sitting in a quiet café with tea and my journal, I finally accepted something I’d spent the entire trip resisting.
There really is no certainty in your 40s.
You still question your career. You still question your friendships. You still make questionable travel decisions. You still ignore online reviews written by people who clearly knew better.
But maybe certainty was never the goal. Maybe the point is to keep choosing the journey anyway, even when you don’t know exactly where it’s leading.
Sometimes the best travel advice is the one you ignore—like this train.
If I’d taken the train from the beginning, I would’ve had a much easier trip.
I also wouldn’t have had this story. And at this point in my life, I’ll choose the story every single time.
