The Voss Dufour World Tour

When you first step off the boat and set food on Lao Liang, you are greeted by Lawrence and his big smile. He’s British, born in little town called Penrith, but his accent doesn’t really call out Northern England. Then again, it’s been 4 years since he has been home, spending that time climbing in Thailand. It was a young woman that he was in love with back in high school who was a climber so  he took up the sport. He didn’t get the girl, but he’s been climbing for 14 years since, eventually finding his way to Thailand.

After leaving England, Lawrence arrived in  Krabi, Ao Nang and then Tonsai where he spent 8 months for a bit of work, but mostly play.  During his time in Ton Sai he met Mike Weitzman, the allusive face of Lao Liang. Mike does a lot of the bookings, responding to emails and the answering the phone of Lao Liang so when people arrive they assume Lawrence is Mike.

This year is Lawrence’s second season at Lao Liang,  last season as manager and this year as Dog’s Body  He has 4 bosses, but he doesn’t pay them much attention.  Lao Liang is open for the high season which is November to May. After that, the waves and weather get too rough and inconvenient to get to the island. Lao Liang has been open as a resort for 7 years, mostly run by a Bangkok company called X-Site. They organize groups of wealthy Thai to make the trip for some R and R. But that trend has changed in the past year. Bookings of Thai people are down. Last year the resort was 60% Thai and  only 40% Westerners while this year less than 20% of the bookings are Thai. Well, until April when it’s the Thai New year and it’s all Thai coming to Lao Liang to celebrate.

Lawrence has some pretty stressful responsibilities at Lao Liang. They include: waking at 10am and dealing with any checkouts and paperwork for new arrivals. He makes up the bills, collects money and when new guests arrive, he briefs them on the island. And in the evenings you can find Lawrence behind the bar. Most importantly, if anyone needs a climbing partner, Lawrence is your guy. He does enjoy spending time with (and answering questions of)  the guests, but more so if he is climbing with them. After all, that’s what brought him to Thailand many moons ago. Unfortunately this season he hasn’t climbed very much due to 2 pulled tendons in his wrist but he’s getting back on the rock soon. He’s a 7c climber, aiming for that 8a….so close, yet for now it remains just out of reach. But he’s confident he will get it this year. Clearly he has time to practice.

He has many talents, one of which is speaking Thai fluently, a feat not many foreigners have mastered. It began when Lawrence landed as a tourist in Bangkok and didn’t know how to say thank you. While in Ton Sai, he ran a bar and was trying to learn Thai but that proved difficult because everyone else wanted to practice their English with him. He could order from the menu, order some beers, but that was where it ended. His language break thru happened when he went to a resort island called  Koh Phi Thong (Golden Buddha) to serve as the Bartender and the Activities Guide.  He was the only westerner and so his hand was forced to learn the language. Words, phrases and sentences started to come much quicker, curse words included. (Turns out its an insult in Thai to call people animals.) He got paid to snorkel, get his dive license and love life. Total immersion with no escape. Somehow he managed to learn Thai in between all the fun he was having.

When he’s not working at Lao Liang, he’s with Mike bolting new routes in and around Na Thai (Face of Thai), just outside Ao Nang. Na Thai is a small Muslim village with many hidden crags and lots of new routes being put up by Mike, Lawrence and others. The rock is clean and beautiful but it takes some blood sweat and tears to make it climbable. Mike and Lawrence are specifically bolting Spirit Mountain, a monstrous rock with 4 sides; 3 are clean of jungle brush and the 4th side is overhang with super futuristic routes.

Freedom from bureaucracy is what Lawrence likes most about working at Lao Liang. There really isn’t much paperwork, a stark contrast to his life back home. Studying as a civil engineer he realized that sitting behind a desk and a chalkboard wasn’t his game so he took off for something else; which he literally did in the middle of an exam. Sitting there, looking around at the other academics, he realized he didn’t even want to be in University, so he turned in his exam, called a friend and went climbing; Hasn’t looked back since that moment.  For a brief moment, he went back to his home town, working on infrastructure and maintenance of gas stations. Not a glamorous job as he was breathing in fumes all day long, but it bought him a one way ticket to Bangkok and he hasn’t gone home since…(well maybe just for the holidays once or twice.)

While Lawrence gets to spend half a year at Lao Liang, James and I just had 4 nights there…”just!” As they say, all good things come to an end (even though James and I don’t quite believe that) so we bid adios to Lawrence earlier today, promising to keep in touch. Our experience at Lao Liang was amazing and we appreciate the work that Lawrence and his team did behind the scenes. We look forward to seeing Lawrence again, somewhere, at some point down the road.

Congratulations! You are one of the thousands of people who have decided to take a break from life as you know it and take a trip round the world. Believe me, after making that decision (and clicking on the “purchase” option to buy your plane ticket) all the rest will be easy-peasy; it will just fall into place.

But first that plane ticket. Let’s talk about that.

Which type of plane ticket will you buy? Assuming you are planning on buying a Round the World Ticket (to which there are pros and cons), you have a couple options. I don’t know much about other companies (besides  <a href="www.oneworld.com" the One World Alliance</a>) or options, but can definitely talk about our experiences and the research we did.  James and I are traveling on a 4 continent  (Europe, South America, Oceania and Asia) One World Alliance ticket. This ticket allows you 16 legs over the course of your 4 continent travel. There are some things to know about this type of ticket:

Once you cross an ocean, you can’t go back over that same ocean. Once we flew from South America to Oceania, we couldn’t fly back to South America….at least not on this trip!

Our travel also has to be completed in about 11 months, or roughly 330 days.

The dates are changeable. You do need to book the ticket with set flights to assure that there are flights from point A to point B. But if and when you get to Point B and decide you want to stay longer than you originally planned, you can change your flight for a later date. We were told there was no fee for this and there wasn’t until we arrived in Oceania and Qantas told us that any changes done in Australia had a fee. Luckily we were calling from NZ and so reassessed some upcoming flights thru Asia.  Hmm…we hope we don’t run into this problem again. Touch wood.

Once you fly into a city, you can’t fly back into that city ie you can’t fly into Sydney, then fly to Melbourne and then back to Sydney. Each city on your itinerary has to be different.

One World is an alliance of some great airlines: Qantas, LAN, Iberia, Cathay Pacific, JAL, British Airways to name a few. They offer 3, 4, 5 and 6 continent ticket options. Before you buy one of these tickets, consider purchasing the ticket OUTSIDE of the USA. Depending on the country/continent, these ticket prices vary. There is a chart on the One World Alliance webpage outlining the prices based on purchasing location. Our ticket was about 1600 GBP/pp, at the time around $3000 USD. As we didn’t include North America in our 4 continents, our trip officially began in London but with family over there this worked out well for us.  While a round-trip ticket to London in August wasn’t cheap (about $900USD/pp), when all the math was done, we ended up saving ourselves about $1000 USD had we bought that same ticket within the USA.

I was lucky that James did most of the leg work when figuring out our itinerary. To say it took a lot time would be an understatement. There was lots of constant rearranging due to where and when particular flights went vs where we wanted to go. A lot of attention has to be paid to the flight path of the flights you are selecting. We had originally planned to fly Europe, South America, Asia and then Oceania, but all flights out of South America to Asia touched down somewhere in North America, thus making our 4 continent ticket a 5 continent ticket, even if it was just a lay over. So we (let’s be honest, it was James) had to spend some time figuring out  our route.

The upside of this ticket, in my opinion, is that it’s a nice balance between wanting to plan a bit vs figuring it all out while on the road. We have an itinerary and a sense of where we are going. But in between airports, the world is our oyster. Perhaps for some, that’s too much planning and they would rather buy tickets on the go, while on the road. That’s cool too. We have bought in-country flights to visit other places that aren’t official stops on our One World Alliance itinerary. Do whatever works for you. With the internet and a credit card, anything is more or less possible. .

The other Round The World Tickets options (no doubt there are many out there) that  I know about is with <a href="www.staralliance.com" Star Alliance</a>.  I am not 100% sure which airlines are in their alliance, but I do recall that their ticket pricing is based on desired miles traveled. So instead of purchasing a ticket by number of continents, you do it based on your flight path and how many miles that adds up to. Again, we went with One World Alliance so I can’t speak much to other choice, but I remember that our similar fllight with Star was over $5000 USD.

Considering the price of a round-trip ticket to Thailand from Boston is no less than $1000 USD and flights to Australia and some of our other further away destinations are $1500 USD +,  I would say with conviction that our $3300 USD 4 continent ticket is a bargain. It works out to about $200 USD/per leg of our trip. And no matter what price you put on the ticket, clearly the experience is priceless. Thank you Mastercard!