Lunag Namtha to Luang Prabang, Laos

  Nong Khiaw, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Saturday, July 26, 2008

We took the bus on Thursday morning from Luang Namtha to Pak Beng. There were 13 of us making the trip and we were all sitting on the bus (a 52 seater) waiting to go at 9:30am when the driver jumped on and told us to get off and get onto the mini-bus. In typical South East Asian fashion the mini-bus only had 10 seats for the 13 of us so instead of having loads of space on the 52 seater, they crammed us all into the 10 seater! The road was great for the first 60 or 70km then the good road turned up towards the Chinese border and we took a crater filled road East towards Pak Beng. We ran over a chicken on the way, how we didn't kill 10 of them I'll never know. We also saw a village being washed away by an overflowing river. There were some men in the river trying to salvage things from their houses but most of the villagers were just standing on the road watching their houses being washed away. It was the kind of thing you usually only see on the news and it was weird watching it happen in front of us when there's absolutely nothing you can do to help.

On the Bridge in Nong Khiaw

Scenery in Nong Khiaw

When we got to Pak Beng we got a tuk-tuk with 2 Dutch couples, 1 bloke, 3 girls - do the math!!! That took about an hour but the scenery along the way was really nice. When we got there we checked into a bit of a crappy hotel (all the hotels in Nong Khiaw are crappy except for one which is really expensive). We met the 4 Dutch and went to the boat dock to arrange for a boat to take us down river to Luang Prabang the following day. Had dinner in a restaurant overlooking the river and the amazing scenery surrounding this town. We kind of wanted to stay here an extra night but wanted to take the opportunity to charter the boat with the 4 Dutch too otherwise we could have ended up chartering a boat alone which would have been very expensive.

Scenery from River Trip

Pac Ou Caves

Next morning we took the boat from Nong Khiaw to Luang Prabang. The scenery along the way really made the trip worthwhile, it was really nice. As we're in the middle of the rainy season the river was moving very fast and there was lots of branches from trees and all sorts of other debris being carried downstream. There were some rapids in places and I decided to stick my life-jacket on to the amusement of the others! On two occasions the rotary blade (think thats what its called) hit logs going down the river and got damaged so the drivers assistant had to strip down to his Y-fronts, jump into the river, get under the boat and fix the thing.

We stopped off at the Pak Ou caves about an hour north of Luang Prabang and we both thought they were very disappointing. If we had paid for a day trip from Luang Prabang to come out and see the caves we really would have regretted it.

Got to Luang Prabang at about 4pm and on first impressions it looks like a really nice town. The plan is to stay here for 6 or 7 days.