The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World.

by Jennifer Baggett

  With promises of crumbling French mansions, bougainvillea-shaded sidewalks, ancient Buddhist monasteries, and steaming noodle stalls awaiting us in Vientiane, Amanda and I were as keyed up as little kids at Disney World as we stood in line for our Thailand exit stamps. After journeying over the Friendship Bridge across the Mekong River and into Laos, we exchanged two photos and $35 U.S. for a thirty-day visa. A stoic official in a Soviet-style uniform inspected our bags, then waved us through to the other side, where we teamed up with a few other tourists and negotiated a cheap passage into the city. Forty-five bumpy minutes later, our van veered off the dusty highway and onto a sunny, tree-lined boulevard.

  Rolling into downtown Vientiane, we were met by an enchanting blend of French Provincial architecture and Eastern religion. Fresh-faced vacationers sipped cappuccinos at sidewalk cafés, shopkeepers charmed new arrivals with handmade silks and intricately carved Buddha statues, and monks with freshly shaven heads and tangerine robes streamed from golden temple gates. Everything and everyone around us moved with a warm, syrupy tempo as if time had slowed. Following suit, we strapped our packs tightly to our backs and began a leisurely glide down the main road, returning the stream of resident grins and warm “Sabaydee” greetings.

  Our first order of chillness: sampling traditional cuisine at Makphet (“chili pepper”), a snug eatery with ivory floor tiles, lime green walls, and open glass doors. Settling at a hardwood cherry table, we were immediately greeted by not one but three friendly servers in pinstripe aprons who presented us with tall glasses of ice water with fresh mint leaves and an extensive menu of popular local dishes, all prepared fresh daily.

  “Hey, look at this, all of the salads come with a bacteria-free guarantee. And they have rice pudding. I love this place,” Amanda said.

  Amanda knew as well as I did that after months of brushing our teeth with tap water and sampling endless street cart cuisine, our stomachs were coated with cast iron. But the dessert part was a definite plus.

  “I know. It’s adorable. I’m so excited we decided to come. And I can’t wait to explore this town,” I said, taking a much-needed sip of the cool drink.

  “This is your first time in our country?” the most smiley of the waiters (if that was possible) inquired. “We very much welcome you to Vientiane. I am Sommai,” he added, asking us our names before taking our order.

  We soon learned from Sommai that there was more to Makphet than met the eye. Run by Friends International, the restaurant trained homeless youths to cook and wait tables as well as afforded them an education and other necessary skill sets. Having learned that Laos was one of the poorest countries in Asia, we were happy to splurge on a multicourse meal and leave an extra-large tip. A tiny gesture, sure, but rather than give money to beggars—something guidebooks and travelers generally warned against doing—we much preferred putting our tourist dollars to good work through reputable nonprofits. In many developing nations we’d visited, it was fast becoming a trend for guesthouses, retailers, and cafés to double as charitable organizations, so any time the girls and I could sleep, shop, and eat for a good cause, we did.

  After an unhurried feast of noodles with bean sprouts and bell peppers, pork-stuffed cabbage with chili sauce, sweet mangoes, and flavored kah-feh nyen (iced coffee) drinks, Amanda and I hit the warm and welcoming streets in search of lodging. We strolled past stands of dangling bananas, flower garlands, and vibrant watercolor elephant prints until we found a charming cottage with teal clapboards that advertised doubles for 50,000 kip. We’d yet to procure local currency from the one ATM in the entire country (which was fortunately in Vientiane), but the owner was happy to give us a room key explaining that to “rest now, pay later” would be fine. For the bargain price of about $5 U.S., we were given a surprisingly tidy and spacious abode with floral curtains, matching bedspreads, and a sidewalk view.

  Sprawling across one of the twin mattresses, I closed my eyes for a few seconds. When I opened them, Amanda was gone. Fumbling through my bag to find my watch, I stared at the dial for almost five minutes before my brain finally churned out the correct time zone. Wow, I’d been asleep for an hour. I sprang to my feet, in a panic until I remembered there was nowhere I had to go and nothing I had to do. Man, I seriously love my life, I thought, walking over to the window to pull up the shade. Soft rays of light streamed in, illuminating a note next to my pillow that I’d missed: “Jenny B, Didn’t want to wake you. Went to get money and check out the town. Be back in an hour or so! AP”

  Content to wait in the cozy room, I piled a few pillows against the headboard and pulled out my latest obsession from a secondhand book exchange, But Inside I’m Screaming, about a broadcast journalist who has a nervous breakdown on camera and checks herself into a four-star psychiatric center. Lost in a world of delusional outbursts, bed checks, and pill cocktails in paper cups, I didn’t notice the lock turn.

  “Dude, wait till you see the wad of cash I have,” Amanda said, bursting through the door.

  “Jesus! You scared the hell out of me.”

  “Oh, sorry. But you’ve gotta look at this,” Amanda replied, pulling a stack of blue-and-white bills out of her purse and splaying them across her bed.

  “I seriously feel like a drug dealer,” she added before dramatically pulling her sunglasses down over her eyes, falling on her back, and rolling around in the money.

  Though she’d probably withdrawn max $200, kip notes were dispensed only in small denominations, which created quite a conspicuous cash flow scenario for Westerners.

  I laughed. “Umm, looks like the pusher got into the goods again. Damn it, Pressner, didn’t we discuss that it’s bad for business when you do that? What have you been up to for the past hour, anyway?”

  “Nothing,” she said in a mysterious tone before leaping to her feet and jumping up and down on the bed, a signature Amanda move (along with dramatic poses in front of fruit stands and Michael Jackson’s Thriller vs. Ace Ventura: Pet Detective dance-offs). While I’d seen her perform this ritual dozens of times—from our freshman-year college dorm to our first night in Peru—this particular encore symbolized so much more to me: my quirky friend was back and better than ever. It was such a relief to see her having fun and not rushing off to an Internet café to work.

  In theory, Amanda, Holly, and I should’ve been able to pursue our own trip goals and peacefully coexist. But considering we ate, slept, breathed, brushed our teeth, and peed all within ten yards of one another, the reality of our on-the-road lives was that everything one of us did affected the other two. All in all, we’d done a remarkable job at balancing our individual needs with those of the group’s, and 95 percent of the time we got along flawlessly. But my old habits of intermittent eye rolling and underhanded comments could not have died a slower, more painful death. It wasn’t until our fight in Kenya that I had finally nipped my attitude problem in the bud. After all, it had been Amanda who’d orchestrated the trip and started our blog, so who was I to give her a hard time about working?

  The irony was that somewhere between my ashram mini-awakening, the blissful Goa vacation, and my current love affair with Laos, I’d let go of my desire to control our trip priority list. I mean, who was I to tell Amanda and Holly how to live their lives? It wasn’t as if I didn’t have plenty of unresolved issues of my own. Maybe it was time I learned to stand on my own two feet a little. Use my year abroad as a chance to get over my fears of being alone, maybe even travel solo for a few days (or at least a few hours). Just because Amanda was my best friend didn’t mean we had to do everything together, right?

  Sitting there in our sunny Vientiane guesthouse without a care in the world, I considered sharing my new outlook with Amanda. But then again, why ruin a classic bed-hopping moment with an intense conversation? So I did the next best thing: leapt up on my own mattress and jumped alongside her until we were both out of breath.

  Before long, Amanda and I had melted into Laos’s tranquil culture like marshmallows in hot chocolate,
whiling away our first Vientiane days exploring sidewalk stalls for rattan and coconut shell jewelry and delicate camisoles, reading under the shade of sprawling bodhi trees, chatting with the owners of trendy boutiques, and snapping gleaming shots of the gilded stupa of Pha That Luang at dusk. Just when we thought life couldn’t get any better, we discovered an unexpected path to paradise: massages.

  Despite the abundance of cheap parlors on every corner, most expats and fellow travelers we’d met in town swore by an herbal sauna and outdoor massage center in the woods, where you could get a luxurious steam and sixty-minute rubdown for $4. Intrigued by their tales, Amanda and I flagged down a tuk-tuk (auto rickshaw) driver and asked him to take us to Wat Sok Pa Luang, the mystical forest temple (wat paa) that marked the “spa” entrance.

  After a dusty thirty-minute journey past fields of flower and rice paddies, our “little motor vehicle that could” finally chugged to a stop at a gilded archway flanked by banana trees, and Amanda and I were on our own in the secluded countryside.

  Following a convoluted series of hand-scribbled posters and several ambiguous gestures from resident monks, we wound our way down the long gravel road past modest huts, frayed hammocks, and the occasional barnyard animal. We’d just about given up when we heard a voice from above directing us where to go. “You want steam and massage? Come this way!”

  Nestled thirty feet above us in the treetops was a makeshift wooden platform on stilts, packed to the brim with tourists in bathing suits and silk robes. Climbing slowly up a rickety staircase, Amanda and I fell into line behind fellow hedonists waiting to sign up for their treatments. A rosy-cheeked woman with a clipboard sat perched on a wooden bench near the rail doling out silk wraps. After ducking behind a curtain to change out of our clothes, we entered an attached outhouse structure that served as the sauna.

  A wave of sweet, hot steam smacked us in the face as we blindly felt around for an empty bench, tiptoeing carefully around the hissing coals packed in pots on the floor and trying desperately not to sit on someone else’s lap by mistake. We finally found an empty board and reclined back against the wall prepared to sweat off at least ten pounds. It didn’t take long before we were puddles on the floor, infused from head to toe with a magic blend of kaffir lime, basil, lemongrass, rosemary, mint, camphor bark, and what smelled like a “special” herb to give guests an extra kick. Hey, who were we to deny the effectiveness of ancient Lao healing practices?

  When we couldn’t stand the scorching temperature any longer, we stumbled outside and flopped down on one of six massage cots squished inches apart on the back porch, doing our best to avoid the web of sweaty limbs splayed across the communal space. For the next hour, we were pulled and stretched like ropes of saltwater taffy by energetic young masseurs. Snaps, crackles, and pops filled the air as our body parts, made extraordinarily malleable by the steam bath, were adjusted one by one and then kneaded back into their somewhat original position. What looked and sounded like medieval torture was actually the most blissful and satisfying massage I’d received on the road—and constantly lured by the rock-bottom price tags in South America, Kenya, and India, I’d tallied quite a few. Pumped full of endorphins, I slurred a gracious thank-you to my therapist and floated over to the waiting area, where Amanda already sat sipping hot tea and chatting with one of the women who managed the place.

  “That was so amazing. We have to come back tomorrow,” I said.

  “I know. I wish we’d found out about this place earlier. This is Noy, by the way. She was just telling me that her aunt, who is a Buddhist nun, was the one who created this spa.”

  Noy’s cheeks glowed brightly, no doubt from the healing effects of the steam, as she continued to fold the spa’s modesty sarongs against her slightly rounded belly.

  “Hope you enjoy the massage,” Noy said, motioning for me to help myself to a cup of tea.

  “Sooo much. Thank you, uhh, kop chai,” I replied, sinking down on the bench next to Amanda.

  “We leave the money here with you, right?” Amanda asked, doing her best to air-dry the kip note she held in her hand.

  “Yes, I take it. Thank you. And I have your address at hotel so breakfast at café next door in the morning. Eight-thirty is okay, then?”

  “Sure, I’ll meet you there,” Amanda replied. Noy nodded and smiled before walking away.

  “Hot date tomorrow?” I asked.

  “Long story. I’ll tell you later,” Amanda said as Noy returned with our change.

  After settling the unfathomably inexpensive bill, we joined the crowd of other satisfied customers walking back toward the entrance of the monastery. As we stood waiting to hail a passing tuk-tuk, Amanda and I were pulled into a conversation with two local girls, a French couple and (much to our surprise) a cute American guy named Carter, who suggested we all grab a sundowner at a nearby outdoor bar.

  Twenty minutes later, our new crew (including the tuk-tuk driver) was sitting cross-legged on bamboo mats at a waterside café, watching the sun melt into the Mekong River. As we slugged supersized bottles of Beer Lao, we performed the requisite backpacker meet ’n’ greet: Where you from? Where have you been? Where you going? Carter, who’d been in Asia for a few months already, took an instant liking to Amanda, engaging her in conversation and whipping out his camera to show her his favorite travel shots.

  Any time Amanda and I were in a situation where there was only one single guy (luckily a rare occurrence in the hostel world), we’d joke about flipping to see who flirted first. But the truth was, even though we liked similar “types,” it was often clear from the get-go which of us got dibs: Soccer Player (me), Photographer (Amanda), TV Producer (me), Entrepreneur (Amanda), Film Fanatic (me), East Village Musician (Amanda), Boy Next Door (me), Sandy-haired Ski Bum (Amanda)—all easy layups. But even when it wasn’t so stereotypically obvious on their end, our individual quirks generally stepped in to make the call. Although it’d been years since we’d both been single at the same time back in NYC, we had our on-the-road system down, from dutifully playing the wing woman role to gracefully exiting when the time was right.

  So when sparks had started to fly between me and Adam, a cute British computer programmer staying at our guesthouse in Goa, Amanda’s schedule had miraculously filled up with solo activities. Considering how long it’d been since I’d had any sort of carefree fling, I was supremely grateful for her strategic absenteeism, but as her only on-the-road friend, I also worried that she’d feel left out. I’d vowed to tip the scale back in Amanda’s favor the first chance I got. And now it was looking as if I might not have to wait long.

  Later that night, as we cruised back to downtown Vientiane, Carter suggested that Amanda (“uhh, I mean you and Jen”) accompany him to Vang Vieng, a tiny mountain town in the north.

  “Seriously, you two really should come. It’s this totally cool backpacker hideout where everyone goes river tubing all day and then parties at night,” he added, running a hand through his shaggy auburn mop.

  “Well, we’d planned to go to Luang Prabang in a few days, so I don’t really know,” Amanda said, glancing over at me with a hopeful expression.

  “It sounds really fun,” I interjected. “When are you going?”

  “The day after tomorrow on the nine a.m. bus. Vang Vieng is actually on the way to Luang Prabang, so if you ladies want to make a detour, I’d love to hang with you. Seriously, it’d be totally cool, ya know?”

  It was then that I realized just who it was that Carter reminded me of. It’d been bugging me all night, but suddenly it was so obvious. He was Amanda’s ex-boyfriend Baker reincarnated. Of course, considering the tumultuous, multiyear relationship that had been, I kept my observation to myself. But now I was fairly certain we’d be on that bus.

  Back at the guesthouse, as I dug through my pack trying to locate the least grungy items to wear to bed, Amanda wandered out of the bathroom, performing her nightly walk, talk, and toothbrush routine. As she worked her back molars, we discussed the p
ossibility of taking Carter up on his offer. A quick peek at our Lonely Planet guide confirmed Carter’s claims about Vang Vieng being “cool,” so we agreed to play it by ear and decide the next night.

  “We need to talk about tomorrow morning too,” Amanda said, flipping off the bathroom light and climbing into bed. “You remember Noy from the spa?”

  “Oh, yeah, your breakfast date? Well, you know there’s no way in hell I’m getting up at eight a.m., but go right ahead and have fun.”

  “She might not even show up, but if she does, she said she’d take me to visit her aunt, you know, the nun who started the spa. So I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone, and, well…”

  Sensing the hesitation in her voice that usually preceded news she feared would disappoint me, I cut her off at the pass, explaining that she should stay gone as long as she wanted and that I was totally cool to hang by myself in town. Picking at the corner of her comforter, she rushed on to explain that she actually wanted to meet the nun to talk about herbal remedies just in case she decided to maybe, possibly, “but not if you’d be upset,” accept a story she’d just been offered. It was the big enchilada, the mother of all assignments, a $3,000 piece on healing remedies from around the world. She’d pitched it months ago, when we were still in Kenya, but hadn’t heard back from the editor until now.

  “I’m not sure doing the piece would be the best idea, but either way, I thought it’d be cool to talk to the nun,” she said.

  “A-man-da. Do you really think I’d be upset if you took this? I just wanted you to enjoy the trip and not waste so much time in Internet cafés, but now that you have a legitimate assignment, you’ve gotta take it. It’s your dream. You must follow your dream,” I replied, trying my best to make light of the situation.

  “Yeah, I guess, but the timing of this couldn’t be worse. I mean I’ve been having so much fun just traveling, especially here. And things with us are finally really good, and I wouldn’t want to screw that up. Plus it’s going to require a shitload of research.”