The route that just about all backpackers take from Northern Thailand to Lao is from Chiang Mai north, across the Mekong River to Laos and then down the river by boat for 2 days with a stop in Pak Beng, Lao for the night. The route is so popular that most guesthouses in Chiang Mai offer package deals. So, not to be left behind by the Gringo sheep herd, we too purchased our package tour in Chiang Mai.
The first leg of the tour consisted of a mini bus ride from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong. I have no photos of this ride as I was too busy hanging on and keeping my eyes shut so I didn't have to see our driver driving like a maniac and passing on every hill and blind corner. The few times I did open my eyes, we were passing a shrine on the side of the road where the driver had to take both hands off the wheel to pay his respect. Go figure that all of these shrines seemed to be on a corner.
Our mini bus of 14 people arrived in Chiang Khong early in the afternoon and we were checked into our guesthouse room. Much to Kelly's delight, there was a throne toilet. Much to Kelly's dismay, there was no way to flush it. Highly overrated anyway!!
I must say though, it was lovely sitting on the patio of our guesthouse looking across the Mekong to Lao. It was a beautiful evening and the beer was cold. There seems to be a recurring beer theme here. With the heat, it really isn't surprising.
After a night of so-so sleep, mostly because the power is shut off at 11:00 so after that there isn't even a fan in the room, we were bussed to the exit kiosk for Thailand. It seemed to be relatively well organized and we were stamped out of Thailand with little problem.
Then came the short boat ride across the river to Lao.
Then came chaos at the Lao border. This is where we got our first taste of hurry-up-and-wait. It was a free for all with passports flying everywhere. No one really seemed to know where to go or what to do. We filled out papers and then stood in various half-assed lines until someone took our passport. Somewhere in the foray, we paid for our visa and somehow got our passports back and we were on our way. We walked up the road for about 20 feet and were stopped so we could show our passports. Of course, by then we had just gotten them put away. But in order to make sure no one was sneaking into the country, we complied and produced our validly stamped passports. Off we went another 20 feet up the road and we had to queue up yet again. This time, we had to write our passport number, name and nationality on the boat list. It seemed all the paperwork was done and we were ready to go. Not so. Now we were rounded up in what seemed to be someone's front room and told to wait. So, wait we did with about 15 other people. After about 20 minutes of waiting there, we were told to walk to the top of the hill (another 50 feet up the road) and wait. What a novel concept. After 10 minutes there, we were picked up in a tuk-tuk and taken to a restaurant where, guess what, we were told to wait. At least this one had cold beer. Ya, ya, that recurring theme. Another half hour and we were loaded on to yet another tuk-tuk. This one actually took us to our boat. On we went with about 85 other travellers. I would say about 90% were Gringos, with the remaining 10% locals who got quite a kick out of us backpackers. We were fortunate to get 4 seats together near the back of the boat. Later, we would find out we "lucked" into being at the nightclub end of the boat.
The scenery along the way was amazing. As you can see from the photo, one really needs an experienced captain to get you down the river. There are some sections that are really treacherous with rock outcropping and sand bars. There were times that you looked ahead and truly wondered how the captain would get the boat through. But he did an amazing job and we all felt relatively safe.
We did have a snack bar on board that stocked a few items such as potato chips and noodles, but the real hit of course was the Beer Lao.
Campbell seemed to find the most comfortable place was sitting on the window sill.
Kelly was just as happy to pull up a piece of floor and settle in with her book. The quiet only lasted a short time as the backpackers consumed more and more Beer Lao and one of them cranked up a speaker he had connected to his i-Pod. Well, the back of the boat was party central and everyone sang and cavorted for the better part of the 7 hour journey down the river. Even Campbell and Kelly got into the act and had a great time chatting with people from all over the world.
We arrived in Pak Beng at about 6:00 pm - just as it was getting dark. I cannot imagine being on the river in the dark. I had warned the kids that Pak Beng may be a rather primitive town as I had heard and read things that suggested this may be the one place Kelly would have trouble finding a toilet and we would all be well-advised to use our silk sheets in the beds to fend off bed bugs. Well, we were all pleasantly surprised. The shore was packed with people trying to convince people to go to their guesthouse. We settled on the Bounmee Guesthouse. A tuk-tuk drove our packs to the guesthouse, while we walked the 5 minutes up the hill. The rooms were clean, with toilets and fans. Nary a rat to be seen. We had a quick bite to eat and went to bed early as there really wasn't much else to do in town other than drink and we had had our share of beer on the boat.
We had a wonderful breakfast at our guesthouse, overlooking the Mekong.
Then, we packed up and headed back to the boat. No tuk-tuk for the ride back down the hill. We all rushed to the boat by about 8:30 so we could get seats together again. We did get our seats together, but then we waited and waited. Sometime around 9:00 an official came on board and collected all of our tickets. Then he wandered up and down the aisle for about 20 minutes counting each passenger. He finally announced that he had a problem as there were 85 people on the boat and he only had 84 tickets. So, the big question...how was he going to check when he had already collected everyone's ticket?? Well, remember that list from yesterday where we had to write down our passport number? Yup, out it came and he had to check each person's passport against a line on the list. It took him about an hour to get through the whole boat. We still don't know if he found the rogue castaway, or if he just accepted defeat and let us go - one ticket short. We finally got underway at 10:30.
Day 2 on the boat was substantially quieter than day 1. As a matter of fact, I think all the party animals of yesterday slept most of the way. Again, we some some amazing scenery, some very interesting villages along the way and plenty of fishermen before we finally arrived in Luang Prabang at 6:00.
It was quite the journey that we both loved and hated at various times along the way. We met some interesting people that we are still running across as we head through Asia. We stopped in some very remote villages along the way and saw spectacular scenery. Would we do it again? Probably not, but we sure spend a lot of time talking about it, so I'm glad we did it once.
