Givin'er on the River
Trip Start
Oct 17, 2007
1
6
19
Trip End
Mar 14, 2008
Luang Prabang,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Friday, November 9, 2007
Thinking about it now it was actually pretty funny. I can totally see how so many people get ripped off over here though. Especially at somewhere like a border or a transfer point, everyone is confused, and anxious to get where they're going so they'll believe anything anyone says and wind up paying like 10 times the actual price. We've been doing okay so far with that. I find that the best way to avoid those situations is to just talk with other travellers who have been there already and to just use common sense and go with your instincts.
The slow boat ride actually turned out to be great. We got up early on both days and got seats. We were a group of about 10 and we were the first on the boat on the second day and got the comfortable chairs in the back - thanks for that tip Muff! The boat only has a capacity of about 70, but there were 150 people on the boat with lots standing and sitting in the aisles and back by the diesel engine. A few older people on board got pretty angry with the driver, but I'm pretty sure they pack these boats like this every day so they didn't listen. I thought it was going to be way worse than it actually was though. I pictured a long canoe with a hole in the floor in the back for going to the washroom... It wound up being a lot of fun and has definitely been the best opportunity for meeting people on the whole trip. We're travelling in a bit of a group now so it's pretty cool. We also met a ton of other people on the boat including some guys who are having a mustache competition which I think is great. Some of the mustaches were just disgusting though... There was also a Kurt Cobain look-alike with a guitar. He didn't play "Smells Like Teen Spirit" though which was too bad.... A few more Canadian mandolin players as well, they seem to be everywhere.
We also had our first taste of Lao-Lao which is some sort of moonshine-ish rice whisky... It's served in clear, labelless bottles everywhere even though it's "officially" illegal. Pretty vile stuff, but it sells for pennies... And when I say pennies what I really mean is thousands upon thousands of Kip which is the local currency here. 1 Canadian dollar is worth about 10,000 Kip so we're feeling like ballers right now. It's a bit of a pain though because they accept Thai Baht, Lao Kip and US Dollars pretty much everywhere so it's a bit of a hassle going around carrying all of those currencies. In general though I think things are much cheaper if you pay in Kip and you pay for bigger purchases using dollars.
When we got here we got into a guesthouse, went out for a pretty tasteless and cold buffet dinner which cost acout 80 cents and then all went to a bar. It was probably the coolest bar I've ever been to. It was open air, built into a hill and had tiki torches and plants everywhere and went up some stairs to a second bar at the top with a bunch of benches around a fire-pit. Definitely good times and I'm sure we'll be back. They legally have to close the place at 11:30 though which is when they have to close all bars. So of course the logical next place to go was a late-night bowling alley! Things just keep on getting more and more random over here, but it was an awesome time. Today we've just been cruising around the town and I think tomorrow we're going to all get together and head a bit out of town to some waterfalls with a rope-swing which are supposed to be pretty great. From there, who knows... Maybe tubing in Vang Vieng, maybe go on another trek... Options are open.
On a darker note, we saw something pretty disturbing on the second day of the boat ride. Karl and this Canadian guy named Blair were just hanging off the boat to take a couple of photos and all of a sudden we see something float by the boat. At first I thought it was a mannequin, but it turned out it was a dead body floating face down. The driver had swerved around it, but I don't think many other people on the boat saw it. We were all a bit shocked and didn't really know what to say. Pretty brutal. We asked a local once we got here and they said that it's not uncommon for bodies to float down the Mekong river from Burma since there's still violence going on in some areas there. A bit of a reality check that we're pretty far from home...
