A very long boat ride

Trip Start May 06, 2007
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Trip End Jul 24, 2008


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Flag of Lao Peoples Dem Rep  ,
Sunday, February 24, 2008

Although the boat wasn't scheduled to leave until 11am, the Kiwi boys and I decided to arrive around 9:30am to get good seats. The long wooden boat was filled with hard wooden benches, half of which contained old, flimsy cushions that sunk down to the bench the second you sat on them. Each bench was about 2.5 feet long and was intended to seat two people. I camped out sitting sideways on a bench to discourage anyone else from sharing it with me, hoping for a bit more space for the ride. At our scheduled departure time it looked like there'd be plenty of space for everyone to spread out and enjoy the ride. If the boat would have left then, we would have had plenty of space, but no such luck. At 11:15am a group of about 35 people showed up, crowding up the boat considerably. Luckily I had chosen a seat in the front of the boat and each of the new arrivals had to stow their bags in the back before finding a seat. Not many of them made their way all the way back to the front, just taking the first spot they could find leaving me with a bit more space.

The scenery during our 6.5 hour ride was beautiful. For the first hour or so Thailand was on our right and Laos on our left until the river curved to the left and we were completely in Laos. On both sides of the river was lush greenery with an occasional small village. The boat stopped a couple of times to let off locals or load more cargo on the roof. I passed some time doing word puzzles with Deanna and Aaron from NYC. When the boat arrived in Pak Beng, the small town that was to be our stop for the night, everyone rushed off to find a decent room. Luckily there was no boat coming from the other direction, so there were plenty of rooms available.

Pak Beng wasn't much of a town - the area closest to the river was filled with guesthouses and restaurants to accommodate the travelers coming from the daily boats. After dinner I went for a walk further down the one street of town into the local section. When I reached the end of the guesthouses I also reached the end of electricity. Pak Beng doesn't have any electrical wiring, so all of the town's electricity is supplied via generators. Although there's a steady income coming in from the boats stopping here each night, there's obviously not enough money to buy generators for every home. The few houses that did have generators also had televisions with groups of people huddled around them. Anyone who wasn't watching TV in a generator-equipped house was huddled around a fire outside near the street. It was a really interesting juxtaposition between the tourist and local parts of town.

The second day when I arrived at the boat around 8am (we were scheduled to depart at 9am) I learned that we had been switched to a different boat for the second leg of our trip. Unfortunately this boat had about a third fewer seats than the one from the previous day, meaning every bench would have to have two people sitting in it. I decided that floor space at the front with a couple of cushions I nabbed from the back storage area would be more comfortable. We saw even more spectacular scenery during our 8.5 hours sitting on the boat the second day, but were all very happy when the boat finally arrived in Luang Prabang.
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