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Published: November 3rd 2011
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Getting back into Thailand I wanted to take the spectacular boat trip up the Mekong river. Two days to Huay Xai with a stopover in Pak Beng for the night. After buying my ticket from the boat ticket desk (all of the tour operators were charging commission) I quickly stopped by the morning market to buy some snacks for the journey.
The boat is literally someones house boat, but it is very long with wooden benches and tables in the middle of the boat with open side's so you can take in the amazing view and at the front of the boat there are some, more comfortable chairs. They give you cushions to sit on but your bum definitely goes numb sitting on a wooden bench for two long days straight.
We left Luang Prabang at 830 and arrived in Pak Beng around sunset. En-route we passed elephants been worked by their owners moving logs, probably to make room for rice paddies, buffalos bathing and children playing in the river, local fisherman hoping to catch something for dinner and some breathtaking scenery. There are many small villages along the river both on the Thai side and the Lao and
their only mode of transport is the river, there are no roads connecting them. Some, mainly on the Thai side have electricity but most seemed not too.
Both days the whether was clear, in the morning of the second day it was a little cloudy and this made the mountains look even more spectacular. It's much better than taking the bus, slow, relaxing and a million photo opportunities (if you have a working camera).
We spent the night in Pak Beng arriving at the tiny village as the sun was setting. We were greated by so many by guesthouse workers trying to get us to stay at theirs, for a small village there definitely isn't a shortage of accommodation. I met Emily on the boat and we easily got a twin room for 50000 overlooking the river. We didn't really do much that evening just went down to the restaurant under the guesthouse and ate there then sat on the balcony over looking the river.
Pak Beng have a very early morning market so before taking the 830 boat to Huay Xai on the border with Thailand we bought snacks from there. Amazingly what we pay for
one rice roll a local pays for three! But what do you say really?
We had a challenge today; the Lao-Thai border closed at six and we wanted to cross it. The boatman told us we would arrive at five but he told us that the previous day and we didn't, a lady from the market said 630 meaning the border would be closed. We were clock watching but with no idea if we were even close it was hard to guess if we would make it. We saw the boat docking area about 515 it then took us a further 15 minutes to dock. 530, six of us were trying to make the border crossing and there was a tuk tuk there waiting, we asked him how much and didn't even bargain just paid him 10000 each. 545, we arrived at the Lao immigration we had to pay an overtime fee but what did we care we would have to pay it saturday too. Saying 'quickly quickly' to all of us they let us through and we very quickly boarded the boat to Thailand. I'm not sure if they were happy to see six tourists turn up just
on closing or not but they were probably used to it. They quickly gave us arrival cards and smiled and let us in then closed up and went home while we were still stood organising ourselves.
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