Blogs from Pakbeng, West, Laos, Asia - page 2

Geo: 19.898, 101.138... read more

Geo: 19.898, 101.138Heute sollte es nun also nach Luang Prabang weitergehen. Wir entschieden uns für die Reise per Slowboat, die mit Übernachtung in Pak Beng ganze 2 Tage dauern soll. Im Vorwege wurde uns gesagt wir sollen dringend Sitzkissen kaufen um die Zeit auf den Holzbänken auszuhalten. Gesagt getan. Nun sitze ich mit den Füßen auf 6 Kissen, denn wir haben die Variante des Bootes erwischt, die Autositze als Sitze hat...Pünktlich um 9.00 waren wir am Anleger, denn was wir nicht wussten war, dass das Boot erst ablegt, wenn es voll ist. Das war dann um 11.30 der Fall.Nun schippern wir also den Mekong hinunter und außer ein paar vereinzelter Fischer und ein paar Kühen und Büffeln gibt es nichts als Wälder und Hügel. Schön ist das auf jeden Fall aber auch etwas eintönig und langweilig ... read more

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

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

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