Day 64: Huay Xai boat to Pak Beng, Laos
Trip Start
Sep 21, 2006
1
65
228
Trip End
Jun 01, 2007
Pak Beng,
Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Friday, November 24, 2006
There are package deals offering a bundle of the boat, lodging, transfer and visa for Laos which helps with the numerous controls and switches. A full two hours are used getting ferried over the Mekong, past checks and onto the boat, which leaves one hour late (more buttock-numbing time on the wooden seats).
Despite warnings that we must stock up before boarding, there's a drinks cooler and snack shelf aboard, and after two hours the boat is invaded by kids scrambling over our bags to offer identical baskets of Beerlao, Pringles and fruit.
The boat weaves from bank to bank avoiding rocks (many with fishing nets attached) and shallows. There are speedboats on the route. These are potentially lethal, and passengers wear lifejackets and crash helmets in case of high-speed collisions.
Both borders are forested, occasionally divided by small plantations. For a while roads and telegraphs parallel the river. Then, the shores turn sandy, with the odd family wading in, casting nets or sifting for shellfish.
Laos shares with its neighbour, Vietnam, a history of French colonialism followed by civil war, carpet-bombing by the U.S., and the installation of a communist government (albeit one open to free marketeering). The American bombing campaign, aimed at Vietcong, left Laos with the uncomfortable record of being the world's most bombed country and with a litter of unexploded ordinance in the fields, which will take decades to clear.
The boat docks at Pak Beng just before subset and passengers alight with their rucksacks for a precarious crossing of planks. The hotel is unsurprisingly a dive - glassless windows, noisy generator, unfinished bathroom walls and exposed wiring. There seems little else to the town other than a road of guesthouses. It's barely lit and the opposite side of the river is invisible from the port. You would not want to spend a second night here.
