Cruise blues

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Imagine the romance of a slow trip down the Mekong river on a cargo boat. Your vessel slides past the luxuriantly foliaged banks and you wave cheerily to the toiling peasants who take a moment from their labours to wave back, smiling. You settle snugly into your chair formed from sacks of rice and share a joke with the boatmen. A few bottles of Beer Lao appear from somewhere and you exchange travel reminiscences with the small group of your fellow passengers, the good humour almost tangible as the alcohol flows. The hours pass too quickly and suddenly the sun is low on the horizon, the now golden waters of the Mekong signalling that darkness is nigh, as is your stopover for the night. You reluctantly disembark and check in to your rustic but homely guesthouse, then meet up with your fellow travellers in a local bar, where the bonhomie is maintained. You retire to bed late, sad that the day is over but knowing that you have more of the same tomorrow, culminating in arrival in Louang Phabang, the most Lao of Laos cities and a UNESCO World Heritage site basking in a rich Lao and French history.

Or imagine that you committed some heinous crime in a previous life. Your punishment is to spend 2 days with over 100 other foreigners on a slow boat down the Mekong. You are in a small non-smoking minority. On day 1, you sit behind 2 women with bad dandruff. On day 2, you sit behind a man who smells of cheese (and not a nice one). Your arse is tortured to within an inch of its life by long hours spent on a thinly padded wooden bench. Your legs scream for space to be extended in, as you are denied that luxury by a fat girl who chooses to sit next to you even though there are many shorter-legged alternatives she could have chosen,. You seek refuge in music, only to accidentally delete 2 of your favourite Boney M tracks from your MP3 player. "Hands Up" and "Mary's Boy Child/Oh My Lord" will be heard no longer on this trip. You look for solace in food, only to find the tuna sandwich you'd purchased at the jetty tastes of black pepper.

You are massively overcharged for the only room you can find at the stopover in Pak Beng, which has no hot water nor, as it turns out, any electricity in the morning. You are offered marijuana and opium by just about everyone, and wonder where you have acquired that depraved druggie look from. In the morning, as you are trying desperately to beat the crowds to the boat, you lock yourself out of your room and watch in agony as less careless individuals saunter down to the jetty and secure prime seats.

And the scenery is in no way good enough to justify the experience ...

Eventually the ordeal ends, and you arrive in Louang Phabang where you trudge around a dozen guesthouses before finding one with availability, charging an arm and a leg for a room in which the bed has no top sheet or blanket, run by a chap with the unlikely name of King Kong.

Several incarnations ago, I must have killed a large number of fluffy kittens.

Lest I be accused of unconstructive whinging, here is my guide to surviving this journey without severely depleting your reserves of patience, tolerance, and bile.

i) Think about exactly why you want to do this trip. If it is for the scenery, then I would definitely recommend taking a 1 or 2 hour journey from some other town on the Mekong - you do not need 2 days on an uncomfortable boat to see what the scenery is like. If it is for the thrill of being on a cargo boat, then you will need to be very lucky - I believe there are still some cargo boats plying this route but most are tourist ones. If it is simply to meet other travellers, then this could be the trip for you - personally, I prefer meeting people in a guesthouse/cafe/bar where I'll be more comfortable as well as having an escape route if a person turns out to be smelly/psychopathic/boring/whatever, but each to their own.
ii) If you really insist on doing this journey, then find 15 or 20 other travellers and privately charter a boat. It will cost maybe $5 per person more than the fuller boat, and can be arranged on the day.
iii) If you really insist on doing this journey with 100 other travellers, ensure you get a proper ticket and not just a voucher for a ticket. Otherwise, when the ticket guy comes round before departure, he will send you off to the ticket office to do the swap. Though this will not cause you to miss the boat, it's irritating nonetheless.
iv) Keep your luggage with you rather than let it be put in the hold. Otherwise you will be one of the last people off the boat in Pak Beng (the overnight stop) and Louang Phabang, resulting in added difficulty in finding accommodation. Many (most?) establishments in these places will not take advance bookings so, like it or not, you will in all probability be competing with your fellow passengers for rooms so best to get off the boat ASAP.
v) Sit at the very front if you are not a fan of passive smoking.
vi) Beer and, occasionally, food are available on board so don't be concerned about imminent sobriety/starvation if you take neither with you.

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Photos

A close-up look at Laos life
Oh, my mistake

The boat
Before the hordes descended

Cargo boat
i.e. what I thought I'd be travelling on

Comments

[Kelly]

ditto
Yeesh, I really hated this leg of my trip as well. The ride was long and uncomfortable. Some travellers even had the guts to take up a whole bench with their backpack acting as a "passenger". And then there was Pak Beng where we slept on a box spring and were awoken at 4am to the the sound of roosters. I stared longingly at the fast boats wishing I had chosen them instead for I never wanted to be at Pak Beng ever again!

[David McHarg]

Excellent englishman....
Safe travels englishman.....you could turn this blog into a book.

[Maureen]

I loved that trip
I did the same trip in October 2005 and loved it. I was with a group of 12 Aussies on a small boat. I guess the main difference was that we had plenty of leg room and space to stand up and walk around. We were passed on both days by speed boats but I think the passengers would have been quite deaf by the time they reached Louang Prubang as the boats were extremely noisy. We stopped several times to visit villages and the Buddha cave and stayed overnight in Pak Beng in a hotel run by a French Lao. Two days was long enough but for me it was a great trip.