On my last morning in Vang Vieng, I was walking along the main road with Niko to grab some breakfast at a bakery I had heard of, and as were walking, a break in the buildings revealed a lovely view of the misty, sharp mountains bordering Vang Vieng; a perfect photo opportunity.
As I took the photo, my phone slid out of my hands, and fell face-down, with a heart-stopping crunch, onto the gravel-strewn road.
Now, sadly, this photo is horrendous quality, and technically not actually accurate, as you will learn later. But it is the only photo I have of my damaged phone, so we’ll go with it.
I was annoyed at seeing my phone broke, but not unduly worried. Phone screens break all the time, and are repaired all the time. The phone still turned on and off, and even loyally backed-up the picture at the top of the blog, but the touchscreen had stopped working. It’ll just eat a whole in my budget, but it’s worth it to retain my phone that acts as my map, camera, and main method of communication to home (Chromebook may be my babe, but it cannot do Microsoft (sensibly) and therefore Skype (less sensible)). And we were intending to head to Vientiane that day anyway, so I may well be able to get it repaired the very same day.
So feeling more annoyed than anxious, I stomped off to the French-inspired bakery, and ordered the biggest, most unhealthy brownie they could bake, and spent the 2-3 hours before the bus arrived drinking tea from an actual teapot and browsing internets.
To clarify how this was possible, I had to crack out the back-up actual camera. I am used to how completely useless I am, so have backup cables, headphones, sunglasses, and camera. I have already lost two pairs of sunglasses, 3 USB cables, and apparently a phone….
When the surprisingly spacious bus arrived, we speeded off to Vientiane on quite a comfortable journey, and arrived three hours later. It still took that long to travel 150km, but never mind.
The bus arrived in the centre, and conveniently stopped next door to the hostel Niko had looked up, so we checked in to what turned out to be a fairly comfortable hostel with twenty-four hour AC. After dumping bags, we headed out to find a mobile phone store recommended on line.
My best bet was a store called ME Store, which I optimistically strolled into despite the huge white Apple logo erected over the door. The women stood at the desk smiled and greeted me as I walked in, but her face fell when she saw the phone.
“What phone model is this? LG?”
Me: “Yes, LG G3”
“Oh no, we can’t fix this here”
Me: “Oh, OK. Is there anywhere nearby that can fix it?”
ME Lady: “Erm…” She quickly consults with a colleague, before they both point towards the river, which doubles as the border, and say “Thailand”.
Feeling slightly anxious, I walked down the road and tried several other phone stores. All had similarly lacklustre responses and suggested ‘Thailand’ or ‘Bangkok’. I was slightly worried as every phone shop had banners or signs proudly proclaiming Samsung or Apple, but I didn’t see LG anywhere in the signage or phone stock inside. LG just seemingly doesn’t exist in Laos. A quick consulation of the LG website reveals they have a Thai webpage, and a Vietnamese webpage, and even a Tajikistani webpage, but no Laos. They did not sell phones in Laos, and therefore there were no replacement parts in Laos.
Annoying.
I decide there is no point shortening my stay in Vientiane, which turned out to be a nice, mid-sized city, but that I would skip southern Laos in favour of returning to Thailand to affect a repair, with the intention of proceeding onto Cambodia from an eastern Thai city somewhere close to the border.
Simple.
So, after a few days in the Laotian capital, which will be described in detail in a later blog, we both bought bus tickets to take us over the border to the nearest Thai city of Udon Thani.
I took the advantage of my last moments in Laos to buy a bag of the best crisps I had found in Laos: Dinosnacks. I don’t know what the actual name was, but they had a Dinosaur on, so they were Dinosnacks to me. They were delicious, and bizarrely, though they are made in Thailand, have so far proved to be elusive there.
We had to endure/enjoy the farce that was the Lao border checks. Of course there was a 10000K overtime customs charge as we passed through on a Saturday. Of course the fact that Niko’s passport didn’t scan properly needed the assistance of about six staff members, temporarily shutting down the border in the process. Of course I was able to walk back in Laos through customs to check where Niko was, and then walk back out of Laos, without anyone saying anything.
It’s Laos. No one cares as long as you’ve paid money.
Thai side was straight forward, and took five minutes. We did rush through though in order to get back onto the bus before the Chinese lady who was very vocal about Niko’s absence at the Laos border holding everyone else up. We made sure to look at her very impatiently when she got on the bus. Last.
As we pulled into the surprisingly-huge-and-bustling small Thai city of Udon Thani, we spotted a large mall, which we made a beeline for. I left Niko in his I-have-Wifi-and-AC bubble, and headed off to the phone floor of the mall.
Every Thai mall has a phone floor. They like phones.
Again, when I handed my phone over to the stall holders, their expressions said it all. “You need to go to Bangkok” was their standard responses. Eventually I found someone whose response was something different; “Wait a moment while we check”.
Success.
A teenager comes back after a few minutes, and after a quick whisper in Thai, the stallholder says “4000B (£80), and it will take seven days”.
Not success.
There was not a chance I was going to spend a week in Udon Thani, so I thanked him, and took my increasingly-expensive phone back to Niko, and headed to a hostel. I had decided I did not want to drag out this repair any longer, so I booked an overnight train that evening to Bangkok.
I was slightly sad about leaving Udon Thani, as I had a brilliant evening meal in the night market, and all of the snacks I bought for the train journey from the market were equally brilliant. But I just wanted my phone repaired, and my travels to be back on tracks.
After an comfortable train ride curled up with a book...well curled up with my Chromebook displaying an e-Book, I arrived in Bangkok once more.
It was so nice to be back in the city. The food was suddenly cheaper; the taxi drivers were fair; and the people were ambivalent about tourists rather than actively trying to take money from them. Heaven!
Reinstalled in my old hostel in the city, where they greeted me by name (I felt both impressed that they remembered, and concerned that I had spent so much time there), after a shower and some free cups of tea, I hopped in a taxi and headed to my best chance of affecting a cheap repair; the MBK mall.
Inside, there is a huge floor just filled with phone stalls and stores, so I had plenty of choice.
The quotes were all similar in price to that in Udon Thani, but the repair time was measured in hours rather than days. The store holders were also quick to reveal the reason behind the high cost of repair; in certain makes of LG the I settled on a stall that offered the repair for 3800B (a mere £76) and three hours.
I went off back to the hostel, to drink free tea and bask in AC. A few hours later, my laptop made a sound. I checked and I found a new photo had been synced from my phone.
I took this to mean my phone was now fixed, so I headed back to MBK to receive my phone, which was whole and functioning once more, albeit with a slightly discoloured patch of screen. But still, I was reunited!!!!
Now, you are probably wondering why there is no photo of me reunited joyfully with my new phone. Well, dear reader, that is because this story is not quite the end of the tale.
Sadly, two days later, I managed to break my phone screen…by biting it.
Let me explain. I had been on a night out, and when I got home, I decided to have a shower. A shower means I have to carry quite a few things, and when I was coming back from the shower, I ran out of hands, and put my phone in my mouth to hold it temporarily whilst I unlocked the door to the dorm. As i gripped my fairly heavy, large phone, I heard this crunch, and grabbed my phone only to realise with dismay that my canines had cracked and bitten through the glass….
I am fairly sure I couldn’t have done that with my original phone screen.
I blame the bloke with the awful facial tuft for using sub-standard products. It’s not as though I paid sub-standard prices…
Anyway, so I had to spend the next day back in MBK. I gave up on replacing the screen again, as if my teeth can break the glass, any small knock would do the same.
So I am now the proud owner of a Lenovo P70 - and it was so cheap at only 6990B. I may have to reassess my finances now I have spent £200+ on phones…..
Anyway, that is the long annoying story. It is boring. It is unnecessarily complex. But hey, if I have to live it, I’m going to share my misery with others.
DSP
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