Ferry cross the Mekong

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May 21, Chiang Kong

Spend the night in a lovely riverside guest house, but everything is shut. No one is around and the ATMs are all closed. We've met an Australian couple, Amy and Nigel, who travelled up with us and they are worried because they have no cash.

We cross the river and get visas for Laos on the other side. We nearly get entangled with some scam artists who tell us they will hold the slow boat for us. The slow boat takes two days to sail down the Mekong to Luang Prabang. This sounds terribly romantic and exotic, although the reality is buying a ticket and heaving your bag on board. Shoes off at the door.

There is only one boat a day and we are kind of late for this one. We argue with a tuk tuk driver who wants to sell us overpriced tickets and meet a girl who is very upset about not finding Flight of the Gibbon, though it turns out she saw a horrible bus accident that morning.

The boat is crowded and there are only hard, narrow seats left, but we seem to have no other choice so we get on. It's OK, and people move around so I 'mind' a couple of padded seats, or rather car seats that seem to have been sourced from scrapped Volvos.

The boat trip is spoilt in some ways by some of the backpacky passengers who just seem focused on how much beer they can drink, and how much they like football, women and getting wasted. They have the best seats - two rows up front that face each other and because I 'mind' an empty seat, I hear them plotting about they're going to get the same seats the next day. They laugh about what a 'good deal' we have down the back. One hatchet-faced girl says she's coming down the next day 'rediculously early because I'm having a lovely trip'.

Bizarrely, we are down there rather early the day and get good seats and most of the wasted ones end up sitting on the floor.

We spend the night in a port town, set up for travellers with lots of guesthouses. I try Lao food - pork with bamboo shoots and sticky rice. It's good, not as spicy as Thai.

The scenery is very soothing along the Mekong - lots of forested hills, very green. Sometimes the river flows between outcrops of basalt, much of the riverbank is rock with an occasional sandy beach. Clouds hover heavily and on the second day the river is fast-flowing milk chocolate after a big storm. Every hour or so we pull up to a collection of bamboo huts and locals get on and off with bags of rice and other items. Small brown children skinny dip in the shallows.

The boat is long and narrow with blunt ends and a flat bottom. The car seats are bolted to the wooden floor and a tasselled and pleated gold curtain lines the junction between roof and wall support.

Claudia left us at the border to catch the bus. She is going to meet Martin. Apparently she really likes him. He's waiting in Luang Prabang.

The landscape opens up and flattens out a little and there are some substantial buildings on the river bank and we have arrived at Luang Prabang, bottoms only a little numb.

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