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Blogs from Pakbeng, West, Laos, Asia
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January 28th 2013
A red-eye start - far too early for breakfast - and a one and a half hour bus trip to Laos Border. Or should we say Chaos Border. As you know we Brits love order and getting into queues - this was more like a 'foule francaise' .... However after two hours of papers, passports, forms, documents we finally got our visas and boarded a dug out canoe to cross the Mekong.... then mounted a water based tuk-tuk to a point further up river (or should it be down river) where we alighted our wooden longboat. Our two day trip started this morning in Houei Xai and finishes tonight in Pak Beng. Approximately 160 kilometres and 7 hours journey today - no doubt some little person should be able to work out how many miles per ... read more
January 15th 2013
Once we had managed to drag ourselves away from lovely Pai, we set our minds on leaving Thailand and heading overland into Laos, but first we had to get to the border. It worked out easiest for us to go back to Chiang Mai for one night, where we ate our way around the Sunday market and met up with a guy for drinks who we first met months ago in China, then leave the next morning for Chiang Rai and stay there for one night so we wouldn't have such a long journey to the border the next day. The bus to Chiang Rai took about 3 hours and we bumped into our Japanese friend Kayzo on the way, but the minute we arrived we didn't like the feel of the place. Massage shops and ... read more
June 8th 2012
Laos. 8th June- 16th June. So part of our excursion was a well anticipated trip to Laos. I had the image of tubing every day for a week in my mind and was very excited about this leg back in the UK. Having just left our friends at Chiang Mai (to be explained in a later blog - like I said I do things arse backwards) we embarked on the worst journey of my entire life to Laos. Maybe it was the fact that I'd been taking my very expensive and useless malaria tablets for a week, or maybe it was because I was missing my friends and being forced to now "travel", ironically, I don't know. What I do know is that it was a very hard trip. We left for Chiang Rai via minibus. ... read more
November 3rd 2011
Finally seated on the boat in some ripped out commuter bus seats, nailed into the floor, we were on our way down the Makoun River heading for Luang Prabeng. This was called the slow boat trip, which is generally thought of one of the best adventures South East Asia has to offer. Brushing the quality of boat/seats aside you could see instantly why this is so popular with great views of wildlife, the surrounding villages at the waters edge & huge mountains. Our first stop was Pakbeng where I had heard that the village is run on a generator after 11pm, so all lights will suddenly go out for a split second at this time. I had also heard that the village was patrolled by people with machines guns, these people being young children...crazy!? Needless to ... read more
October 28th 2011
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 ... read more
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June 10th 2011
Up extra early to get our ticket, the price you pay for taking it easy and not planning or booking tickets in advance, ha to that. Got our tickets and nervously walked the narrow wooden plank to get onto the boat and took our car seats, weird. Strangely comfortable car seats all in rows of two, not bad considering we saw people buy cushions for the 9 hour journey of day one slow boat style. I was really looking forward to this, one of the main reasons I wanted to come to Laos was to do this. And as we set off on our journey I could see why. After a few minutes down the Mekong we were surrounded by mountains, secluded beaches and small fishing boats. We were the only boat for the majority of ... read more
April 29th 2011
Up for breakfast and back on the boat for the day! I spent a lot of my time sitting on the front of the boat taking in the scenery! It was overcast all morning but it got sunny in the afternoon. Most people played cards all day on the boat. Ate another full lunch and I tried everything (which I later regretted). Had a stop at a Cave that was cut out of a limestone cliff. Walked up the stairs to the cave and inside there were a bunch of Buddhist statues. It was so hot in this cave with no air movement so I found it hard to enjoy this as I thought I was gonna pass out. I quickly went back down the stairs and onto the boat where I thought for a second ... read more
March 22nd 2011
Tuesday 1st February 2011 In the morning we were rudely awaken by loud and ferocious knocking on our door shouting 10 minutes till we leave for breakfast... we were a little perplexed as we’d barely had 5 hours sleep and had been informed when we booked that the guest house was opposite the boarder so it shouldn’t matter to them what time we got up. We got taken (all 12 of us with our bags) on the back of a pick-up truck down the road to another hotel for a very basic breakfast, and then told we would have to wait until 10am to go to the boarder which was still miles away... unwilling to wait for 3 hours, we insisted they take us immediately as we had not paid this companies extortionate fee to get ... read more
February 17th 2011
Here we are in Laos...I've been living in Asia for nearly 15 years, and nver made it to Laos, so this is a first for our little family. But much more important, Mari just published the pictures of Tiffany visit to Bangkok. You will need to clik on her page to find the story and the pics....that was indeed a fabulous week! Back to Laos...we crossed the border in Chiang Khong. Easy passport control on the Thai side. From there, you take your longtail, and five minutes later you land on the other side of the Mekong in Laos. And yes, immigration formalities here are pure chaos. One window...actually two...but there is not one line here, there are easily 100 people trying to get at the same time their visa. Depending of nationality, it will basically ... read more
January 6th 2011
It was an early start as we were heading to cross the Thai/Laos border by boat. As some of our group was hung over and Dean has started to get lazy and doesn’t want to become the bad guy, I definitely started to take it upon myself to start pushing people in the right direction. One person forgot to get stamped out of Thailand upon arrival on the Laos side. We still don’t know what he was doing for 30 minutes while everyone was waiting on line. He smiled and thought it was funny to go back to the other side of the river – I told everyone he had the shits. Anyhow, this was a pretty smooth process considering we have a few Forrest Gump types on our trip who like to drink a ton ... read more
