Border crossing and floating down Mekong River
Trip Start
Jan 09, 2005
1
79
90
Trip End
??? ??, 2007
Houei Xai,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Thursday, July 9, 2009
Our first night in Laos was pretty low key since we were just there to spend the night and take off on the Gibbon Experience the next morning. The Houayxai town basically consists of one street and really has a patch of about 6 restaurants/guest houses that cater to foreigners and the rest of town looks pretty much untouched from years before. No one really speaks much english other than to help you check in and order food. All of the small shops only sell snacks imported in from Thailand and barely any speak any English. We got some really bad Indian food and after walking the street a few times, decided to call it a night.
When we got back from our Gibbon Experience we now had friends so we grabbed dinner with our new friends and then hung out back at our room and watched a few Family Guy episodes on our laptop. We went back and forth over which transportation to take to get to our next destination. There are four options, the slow boat, the fast boat, the bus and the airplane. The slow boat takes two days with a stop over in a small town on the Mekong River, the fast boat takes 6 hours but is so dangerous they give you a helmet (there is a 60% death rate so it's pretty inadvisable), the bus ride is 15 hours and is pretty dusty and bumpy, and the airlines in Laos are pretty unreliable and crash often. Hmm, guess which one we took. Hehe
Like so many others, we decided to cram onto a long wooden boat and float our way down the Mekong River. We had been warned to buy a cushion since the benches (if you're lucky enough to get one) are pretty hard and the 7 hour journey each day gets to be long without one. Many people had told us the journey was boring and I was really surprised by this since I thought it was just gorgeous.
The river is pretty brown and gross but the hillsides are all lush and green, similar to what we were trekking in and there were all kinds of small local villages doting the shoreline. It was almost like we were trekking but without the hassle of looking out for leeches, hehe. At some points we floated through green canyons while at other times the land opened up to farther back mountainsides. I loved seeing all the wooden homes that sparsely dotted the shoreline. Each village couldn't have been more than 10 homes or so and they only popped up every few hours or so but they were great to see. I immediately felt like I was back in my town Murra in Nicaragua.
We had an overnight stay in Pakbeng which is about as small if not smaller than the boarder town. This town has no power all day except for when the tourists come in on the boats at 6PM and they use generators until about 10PM. It's crazy to me that the town only operates on power for a few hours a day and that enough tourists come in (almost 100/day) that many shop and guest house owners went out and bought generators to get business.
We didn't really spend too much time wandering around much since the boat ride was so long but we did get some yummy dinner at a local restaurant. I got a yummy coconut soup with veggies (I tried to get it with tofu instead of chicken since the whole town doesn't have power most of the day, gross, but the poor guy had NO idea what I was asking). Greg got a really good yellow curry meal with sticky rice.. we are quickly learning that sticky rice is the main staple with most meals. It's fun because you can ball it up in your hand and dip it in the sauces, mmmmm.
After dinner we pretty much called it a night and it was crazy how DARK the whole town got once the power went out. I loved it since the room was pitch black and I promptly fell asleep. The next morning we were woken up early since we were on the "main drag" and tons of trucks came in and unloaded goods to be put on the longboats down at the pier.
True to form, no one had any clue what time our boat was leaving in the morning. All night long we passed people in the streets and at the restaurant and everyone wanted to know what time we were supposed to leave- yet no one knew. There were rumors that the boat left around 9:30am but people just showed up at whatever time they wanted since the boat didn't leave until 10. It turns out that while we came down in two boats the day before, the guys operating the boats decided to cram us all into a slightly bigger boat. We were all very crammed, with people sitting in the aisles, on the floor, etc.
It was interesting to see the differences in the two boat rides from one day to the next. The boat we were on thee first day seemed to have a few groups of friends and it turned into a booze cruise with people drinking the local BeerLao and whatever liquor they brought on. There was a group up front that broke out into songs while the rest of the people bopped around getting to know one another. It was quite the rowdy ride. The second day we all had way less space and we joined up with a more toned down boat crew (and I got the distinct impression people partied the night before) so the ride was much more chilled.
For me the 2 day boat ride was a great experience and was well worth putting up with the cramped, uncomfortable parts. The scenery was gorgeous the whole ride and it was so amazing to see local fishermen in their wooden boats casting out nets and passing the local tribal villages along the way. The stop off at the town overnight took me back to my Peace Corps days and was part of the whole fun experience.
