Chiang Rai to Pakbeng (Day 5 - Entering Laos)

---

Up way too early this morning at 6am as we have to cross the border into Laos today. Tried to sleep on the bus but couldn’t. The scenery was really beautiful the further we headed north. Got my visa at the border which was actually quite funny! You first get your Thai departure card signed by an official and then get in a boat with your luggage and literally go across the river on a 5 minute boat ride to enter Laos. Everyone on tour seemed to be getting their visas upon arrival, nobody on my tour had their visa ahead of time. We waited about 30 minutes there for everyone to pay the fee and get the visa approved. We then had Tuk Tuk’s which took and us our luggage to the river boat we were to board for the journey down the Mekong River. It sucked to have a suitcase for this portion as we had to lug the suitcase in/out of boats, up and down hills, through the mud, over rocks, etc. Some of the girls with suitcases were actually struggling so the ones with backpacks were lucky!

The boat is wicked! The second we got on it, everyone was in an instant happy mood! There is nothing to do but sit and chill however you want. You can just take it all in, sit in sun chairs and sun tan on the sun deck, sit up front of the boat to take in the best views or sit in the middle portion of the boat with the comfy table and read, play cards, etc. I sat in a sun chair talking to other people and then had some quiet time catching up on my journal writing. It was this day that I think most people really took in how beautiful Laos really is! It was like being in a whole new world! You would see the weirdest things along the river…kids all naked swimming and sliding down mud slides into the river, jumping & screaming having the best time ever! The homes we saw are only little straw huts with no power, nothing. There are no roads to the houses, just dirt paths, random kids everywhere without a parent in sight. The food on the boat was good! A mix of Thai and everything else, so everyone was happy.

At the end of the day when our boat arrived at our hotel, it looked like our hotel didn’t belong. Nestled up in the hills was a huge beautiful building which was obviously where we were staying and we hadn’t seen anything up to this par all day long. It wasn’t even a very nice hotel , but again nobody complained. A bunch of kids all came running up to our boat when we docked. They wanted to help carry our bags up the steep hill for some $$. The thing was is we had already pre-packed overnight back packs as Emmo had warned us we wouldn’t be taking our luggage with us overnight. A few of the girls took advantage of this and let the kids carry their day bags just so they could give them some $$. Some of the kids were pulling a scam saying they deserved more $$ then what was paid but it was a scam and they lingered around forever while we were checking in. The rooms are for sure the most basic ones yet, the water out of the sink is brown and the shower/toilet is all one room. No A/C, but a nice ceiling fan blowing air down on us. The windows are open so you can hear all the weird jungle sounds we are not used to hearing!

We walked around the village of Pakbang to explore and sure enough, found ourselves at the only bar in town! The bartender encouraged us to come in and have free shots! He loved us, changed up the music for us when we walked in and was perma-smile! Everyone loved him so we wanted to give him business so we all bought beers as well! The beers are super huge bottles and only 5 baht=1.20CAD. We had an included dinner at the hotel which was so good! So far, food in Laos is better than in Thailand as far as I’m concerned. After dinner, some people went back to the bar in town to get more drinks. I didn’t want to be hungover on the boat all day tomorrow and majority of people were going to bed so I stayed at the hotel. There was absolutely nothing to do but sit around and chat with others so that’s what I did for a bit. The power went out while we were outside talking about how a year ago at this hotel, they ran it off a generator and never used to have power before. Went to bed at 9:30pm.

---