End of our Mekong Journey
Trip Start
Nov 04, 2007
1
17
62
Trip End
May 03, 2008
Houay Xai,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Monday, December 17, 2007
We left Luang Prabang on 16th December and set off on a two-day boat trip up the Mekong to Thailand.
There were two options for doing this journey. Option 1 was the speed boat, which takes you to the Thai border in one day. Option 2 is a slow boat which takes two days and includes an overnight stop in the small village of Pakbeng. What I should add about option 1 is that it is fast (obviously), you are strapped into a tiny little boat for the whole day, you have to wear a life-jacket and a crash helmet. Whatsmore, we've heard various stories from other travellers that it's not uncommon for people to end up in the Mekong! So, needless to say, we went for option 2 which was the slow boat.
The boat left Luang Prabang at 8:30am Laos time (which means it actually left at 9:00am)
Setting out along the Mekong
. As with any journey in Laos there was plenty of freight onboard: bags of rice, vegetables and various other goods plus a couple of motorbikes. Although we were rather surprised that there were no pigs or chickens which must be a first! The morning started quite coldly, with low clouds hanging in the mountains around Luang Prabang, so we were grateful for our fleeces. For this 9-hour journey we were sitting on a little wooden bench with a rather thin cushion. Although not the most comforable seat in the world it actually wasn't too bad. The advantage of the boat as opposed to a coach is that the boat was plenty big enough for us to get up and wander around to stretch our legs, so the sore-bumness wasn't half as bad as I was fearing.Once we docked at Pakbeng, it was quite a struggle getting off the boat and into the village. The boat 'pier' at Pakbeng is a big sandbank at about a 45 degree incline. So you can imagine us fully-laden with big backpacks on our backs, small ones on our front trying to clamber up the slope ........... one step forward ..... slide two metres back down the slope! Well, we did make it to the top eventually, at which point it was a quick dash to find a guesthouse before all the rooms were taken. The guesthouse we found was quite cheap and nothing special, but the staff were friendly enough if incompetent.
She sat like this for 9 hours!
First thing the next morning it was back to the 'pier' to get on the boat to continue the journey. We actually had quite a lucky escape here. The gang-plank to the boat slipped as the guy in front of us was boarding and he ended up in the Mekong! But we got on safely and it was much the same as the previous day for 9 hours until we reached the boarder town of Houay Xai.
Houay Xai is nothing particularly special. It gets most of its trade because Thai customs on the opposite side of the Mekong closes before the slow-boat arrives. Still, we have enjoyed Laos so much it was nice to have one last night before moving on. We found a lovely little fairy-light-lit restaurant just next to our guesthouse to enjoy our last Laos meal. Unfortunately there wasn't much veggie fare on the menu, but the owner was very friendly and made us a veggie curry especially, which was one of the best curries I've ever had, so all in all it was a nice end to our time in Laos.
Ros:
Ok, I'm going to add a couple of things to Hugh's account of our trip down the Mekong.
Firstly, Hugh, mightn't you want to write something about it being fairly pretty? We were travelling through mountainous countryside - at least on the first day
Unpacking the goods from the boat
. That then giving way to the more rolling hills as we neared Thailand. Although the scenery wasn't as interesting as I'd hoped for. I'd been expecting a lot of wildlife and local scenes along the side of the river, but by and large, the banks remained an inpenetrable jungle with few birds, creatures or people to be seen. Although, when the Mekong began to form the border between Thailand and Laos it was pretty obvious, with the jungle to our left opening to expanses of neatly farmed land being watered by sprinklers and the little farms and villages linked by long stretches of overhead power cables - we hadn't really noticed that such things had been absent in Laos until they reappeared in Thailand.Or how about the Mekong being a fairly scary river with eddies and currents that swirled the boat all over the place? Often things akin to whirlpools, several metres across would suddenly appear. But we seemed to coast past them ok.
Well, until the STUPID australian people who were on the boat decided to go and all sit on the side of the boat. On the *same* side of the boat. The boat immediately began to list scarily whenever we hit a rough patch and the Lao people all looked a bit stressed and moved over to the other side of the boat. When Lao people look stressed you know you've got a problem
I wasn't joking about the 'pier'!
. Lao people don't really get stressed. Even with Hugh and I and a load of Lao sitting on the same side it wasn't really enough to counteract the 15 or so white people on the other side. So we did the very British thing....we said nothing...but glared at them when they weren't looking....AND, finally, Hugh describes the guesthouse at Pakbeng as 'cheap and nothing special'. Which is technically correct I suppose, but leaves out the fact that it was in an old wooden building that seemed to have been made in rather the fashion you'd put together a wooden pallet, cobwebs were strung in every corner and the bathroom....let's not mention the bathroom. Suffice to say we decided we could do without a shower for a night. We slept in our sleeping bags (the ones with the mozzie nets that zip across the face) and were mighty relieved to get out of there! Oh, and Pakbeng is a little village in the middle of nowhere, so has no electricity. We had a few hours intermittent electricity in the evening powered by generator (we could hear when it began to slow down so could grab the torch before the lights spluttered out). But the guest house restaurant, overlooking the Mekong, was lovely and served me hot lemon juice and clear egg and tomato soup to deal with the migraine I'd managed to give myself by getting dehydrated on the boat (no loo stops for the whole journey, so I'd been over-careful). We had looked at a couple of places, so I think most of the guesthouses in Pakbeng are of a similar fashion - we didn't feel that it was worth splashing out the $60 for the posh hotel that rather incongruously sat up on the hill.
