Pakbeng
Trip Start
May 15, 2007
1
11
19
Trip End
Jun 15, 2007
Pakbeng,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Friday, June 1, 2007
We booked tickets for the slowboat to Pakbeng, so we get up early to get on the boat. The journey takes about 10 hours with no stops, but the day passes pretty quickly. Travelling by boat is probably one of the best ways to travel overland, no crazy driving and lots of pristine looking wilderness to look at. After a while it gets a bit tedious though, 'cause there is only wilderness; practically no towns all day. The only entertainment on board is the neverending ticket game they seem to play all over South East Asia. You give your boat ticket to someone when you get on the boat, they give it back. You give it to someone else upon request, they take it and 20 minutes later they come by with all the tickets and you have to point out yours. A while later you get a new ticket back (with your name brutally misspelled). A few hours later, at a completely random point in the journey when you've been floating along for hours with no stops at all, you suddenly have to give that ticket back to them. This kind of thing goes on everywhere and I'm sure there's some logic to it - I just haven't figured it out yet
Our boat
. :D We arrive in Pakbeng around 6 pm and before we realize it some guy has carried our bags off the boat and is now walking away with them. We follow the guy figuring he wants us to go his guesthouse, which turns out to be true. My first impression of Pakbeng is not very positive as people are really pushy when you get off the boat - we hadn't encountered this kind of commercial behaviour in Laos so far so it's a bit of a shock. It doesn't get much better after we get to the guesthouse as the guy who carried our luggage thinks the tip Selmer gave him is not enough and he demands more. Selmer did give him a bit more, but he still didn't think it was enough (by now he had gotten about the same amount of money we paid for the room! Only a few dollars, but still!) and in the end we had to physically shove him out of the room to get rid of him. After that rather unpleasant experience (everyone else in Laos has been sooo nice and friendly and not pushy!) things fortunately go uphill. To my great amusement and surprise our bed has a fake Marimekko bedspread on it - not the kind of thing I'd expected to see in Laos. :D After settling in we go out to have dinner and explore the one street that is Pakbeng. At every step people try to get us to go into their restaurants, which is understandable as Pakbeng's sole purpose is being the one stopover between Luang Phabang and the Thai border, but still annoying. Eventually we settle for a nice looking wooden house with pretty lanterns, where we have lots of sticky rice. I love sticky rice, you have to eat it with your hands!
We go to bed fairly early as there's nothing else to do in Pakbeng and it seems as soon as the owners see our light go out they turn off all the electricity. It's probably for the best as the plugs were getting suspiciously hot, but I'm not too happy about not having a fan, and no light when you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. Not a pleasant thought after having evicted a few bugs from the room and not knowing how many more there might be lurking in the dark. :D
