The Mighty, Mighty Mekong

Well it's been a little while since our last post, but wifi reception on a boat floating down the Mekong more than 100 km from nowhere isn't as good as you might expect. So here begins the account of our three days journey to Luang Prabang, Laos, one of the highlights of our trip.

We caught a bus early in the morning...Friday, I guess, from Chiang Mai to Chiang Khong. That wasn't very interesting, to be honest. Expect for the careening around switchback turns up and down mountains, well over 100 kph and 8" from the edge of the road and of course, certain death. Not alot goes on in Chiang Khong, so we crossed immediately into Huay Xai, leaving Thailand behind. Hello Laos! We celebrated with a piss warm bottle of Beerlao, the national pastime, because the power was out.

The next morning we awoke early to get a seat on the boat. They look like corrugated iron bananas to me.


Unfortunately, my precious punctuality didn't score us the best seats, or even the best boat this time. We were some of the first people on the banana, er, boat, and found some uncomfortable wooden benches with straight backs and about two microns of legroom that would be our home for the next 8 hours. Little did we know, they had WAY overloaded our boat, and eventually decided that the best way to fit 75 passengers on a 30 person boat would be to take two 30 person boats. Gotta hand it to those guys. Anyways it turns out that the second boat was far better. It had modified car seats for benches, more room, and actually left earlier. The boys would have to come of with some devious plan to ensure that THEY had those seats for the next day (foreshadowing...).

The first day of the ride was completely eye opening. I've never seen landscapes so incredibly beautiful in my whole life. I would upload picture after picture, but I'm using someone's card reader and he wants it back. That and the internet here is a touch slow, takes a few minutes to upload one picture. See how much we love you guys? Anyways, the geology is something else, it looks like thousands of flying saucers made of rock have just crashed one the riverbanks. I wish this picture did it more justice.


The river is full of water buffalo, fishermen, naked kids bathing (the sort you'd see in National Geographic), and of course cholera, liver flukes, E. coli, and all the other things we can't see. Needless to say, although it was a hot ride, we didn't go swimming.

We spent the first night in Pak Beng, who's existence is sustained entirely by travelers like ourselves in the same way that the river seems to sustain all the other villages along the way. It was here I had a bit of a revelation. Previously I'd felt kind of guilty about taking pictures of locals, etc, because I couldn't shake the feeling that we were taking advantage of them somehow. But of course I now realize that we, as farangs, are taken advantage of equally by those hocking goods for silly prices, dragging us to their guesthouses and the like. It's a two way street. And at least it clears my conscience a bit. Anyways, Pak Beng is certainly what you would call a hole. We ended up with a two bed room with mosquito nets and holes in the walls for about four USD. Not bad, but overpriced. What were we gonna do, hop back on the boat?

We had a nice meal and lots of Beerlao, cold this time, with some dudes we met on the boat. The older guy with the camera, Manfred, is cycling from Singapore to the motherland, Germany. He's 70. Held his own with us young whippersnappers as well.


So the next day we woke up uber-early to catch the sunrise over the Mekong, and make sure we had primo seats. We bought our ticket and then wrote our names on bits of paper, taping them to the best seats in the house on one of the boats. We felt pretty clever until people like Manfred and another old guy had to sit on wooden benches behind us. But this is no city bus, it's survival of the fittest out here! Besides if we can ride a bike across two continents he can endure a hard seat for a few hours. Anyways I'll save you the details of the second day of travelling, except for one stop we made. We ran ourselves onto a beach near a small village to give little Lao kiddies the opportunity to sell us silk scarves, smoked fish, giant lizards turned inside out and live rats suspended in the air by a string tied to one foot. Yep, we need to seriously re-evaluate our animal cruelty standards here. That and the little girl at our guesthouse in Huay Xai had found some beetles the size of small birds, and had torn off their legs to play with the and watch the try to helplessly scuttle about. There's a reason I'm not posing any pictures on the subject. Its a bit ironic that this sort of thing goes on in the same country that doesn't fix dogs and cats, because they consider it painful to the animal. Anyways here's that promised sunrise picture.


Yeah just imagine being there.

One other thing I did notice on the boat was the universality of iPods. Dustin and I have been mentally keeping note of things we see here that appear to be universal. Like writing swear words inside bathroom stalls, inflated gasoline prices, and people trying to sell us dope because we look young. So like I said, iPods. I didn't actually count, but I'm sure that a third of the people on our boat had one. They were a great source of amusement for the kids, who took breaks from trying to sell us beer and chips to commandeer some poor dude's player for an hour or so. I had to get a picture.


Where would we be without little white earbuds.

So now we're in Luang Prabang, finally, and I'm sure there will be lots to say about this sleepy little town once we get a feel for it. Ta ta!