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The dream team go upstream
Entry 88 of 179 | show all | print this entry |
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Of all the meals we thought we'd be eating on our penultimate night in Laos, a classic Indian curry wasn't one of them. However, there's no street-lighting in Pak Beng and it's a dark and scary walk into 'town' (the other street from ours), so Indian it was.
Pak Beng is our overnight stop on the 2-day riverboat journey up the Mekong from Luang Prabang to the border between Laos and Thailand at Huay Xai/Chiang Kong. Overall my feeling was that March/April isn't the best time of year for this trip. The sky is grey, not with rain-clouds, but with the smoke from hundreds of 'slash-and-burn' fires burning on the sides of the adjoining hillsides. But the smoke isn't quite thick enough to stop the sun from bringing the temperature well into the mid-30s for most of the trip. The 'slow-boats' they use for these journeys aren't air-conditioned and let's just say that by the 8th hour of today's 10-hour marathon we were both feeling like a nice P&O cruise round the Med' would have done just fine, thank you very much.
At the time of booking the boat tickets it became clear just how much the Luang Prabang agents don't know about the boat journey. They don't know how long it is. Some say 8 hours, some 9, some 10 hours (10hrs it is). They don't know whether the boats have toilets and, if not, whether and how often they stop (they do have toilets and only stop briefly to let people - and their entire kitchens - off at random sandy hillsides along the way). They said we'd need to bring everything we'd want for the journey as you couldn't buy anything on board (in fact there was a little 'kiosk' on board where you could buy drinks and a few random snacks - although not on the boat we took the following day...). And they said - when we bought the tickets - that they'd ring ahead with our names and reserve our seats (They didn't. We just turned up and took our chances - luckily we got two 'soft' seats - and couldn't see what the agent had done for their 1$ commission.).
With all that uncertainty it was a peaceful enough journey. We just sat and sweated and tried to read and sweated some more and looked at the slash-and-burn fires burning and swept bits of ash out of our hair and sweated. For about ten hours. Pak Beng is a bit of a nothing town although, in fairness, we had only about 20 minutes of light left in which to take in its delights and had to spend these finding a guesthouse to stay for the night. So, back to that curry. Well, it wasn't Brick Lane, that's for sure. Salt seemed to be the main flavouring in evidence. Still, a couple of bottles of Beer Lao later and the jouney didn't seem quite so bad. We'll hit the hay now - with the prospect of the same all over again tomorrow. Phew: hope Thailand is worth the shlep. (T)
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