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We’ve got a very special Voyager Chat for you! This week we talked to fellow blogger and our IRL friend, Lucy Ruthnum! Lucy is the travel blogger at AbsolutelyLucy. She writes about solo female travel, mental health, wellness, positivity and so much more. We met Lucy in Thailand in 2016 and have kept in touch since. Lucy is one of our favorite travel friends; we even have matching tattoos with her, which we got after a crazy week of partying on the Thai islands. We knew Lucy would have some insane travel stories and she did not disappoint.
Vietnam to Cambodia by Bus Crash
On today’s episode Lucy tells us about a wild several weeks of traveling from Vietnam to Cambodia by bus. Poor Lucy was having one of those travel experiences where things just can’t seem to go right. But first, we kick off the episode with her answers to our ‘Not So Fab 5’ questions! Lucy tells us about why she thinks the Eiffel Tower is an overrated hunk of metal, why sleeping on a beach isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be and her experience eating suspicious meat in Thailand.
Then Lucy gets into her ‘Not So Bon Voyages’ and they are a doozy! Lucy tells us about a string of misfortunate events that kicked off when her bus traveling from Laos to Vietnam got into a crash. What was supposed to be a 22 hour bus trip ended up taking 50 hours! After the crash when the passengers were escaping out the window, Lucy saw that the bus driver had empty bottles of liquor all around his seat! Things got even wilder when the driver tried to escape the police by hightailing it out of their in the crashed bus!
Then Lucy goes on to tell us about arriving to Sihanoukville after dark. Going against her gut, she accepted a ride from a moto-taxi driver. During the drive to her hostel Lucy caught the driver stealing $50 from her bag. She forced the driver to stop and, fed up with being taken advantage of, smacked him across the head with her helmet. Who can blame her?! Lucy told us this experience reinforced two important lessons from traveling: 1) Always trust your gut and 2) Never arrive in a new place after dark.
Lucy goes on to tell us about more issues she had in Cambodia, including a scary story that almost ended in a sexual assault of her friend in the back of a tuk tuk!
Finally, Lucy recounts ANOTHER crash she got into in Cambodia, just a few weeks after the first one. During this crash, the driver’s quick thinking may have actually saved her life. Her back slammed into the windshield and she ended up scratched up, but was rescued by a sweet Australian man passing by on a motorbike. Whew! Lucy certainly has had some crazy adventures!
Timestamps:
[5:30] The meat that turned Lucy vegetarian
[10:00] Lucy’s distaste for the Eiffel Tower
[16:50] How we met Lucy and ended up getting matching tattoos in Koh Phangan
[24:00] Lucy’s wild ride traveling from Vietnam to Cambodia by bus
[39:00] Getting mugged by her moto-taxi driver
[50:55] ANOTHER bus crash for Lucy!
You can learn more about Lucy here: