Le Mekong Joueur

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So after spending a week on Don Khone, home to the four thousand islands, with Uli, an Austrian couple arrive with my next opportunity for traveling. That's right my own boat to sail down the Mekong on!

The 4000 islands quickly first though......

We arrive to find Uli's dream guesthouse and too be honest it turned out to be a great choice. The German band Die Toten Hosen are playing whilst the owner is having his end of year clear out so we each grab one of the riverside huts and spend the next few days relaxing and recovering from our bike ride. Whilst we are there we spend most of our time reading on our balconies, one day going out for a visit to the real 4000 islands with Mike (guesthouse owner) and the rest of the guests at the house and one day riding the cycles around checking out the waterfall. The waterfall here stretches for 16km in width in the dry season reaching 18km in the wet season. This is broken up by islands but would still be an impressive sight from the air.... bear in mind Niagara falls is 3km wide, a different type of fall granted but it gives you a little idea of the size and strength of the river that i am just about to try and sail down on my new boat!

So, onto the boat. An Austrian couple turn up at the guesthouse on about the 4th or 5th day after i arrive and are selling Le Mekong Joueur ( The Mekong Gamble)!

For $360 US i can have my own boat complete with cooking and camping equipment, the first owners bought the boat to take it from Pakse - Don Khone, the second Don Khone - Pakse. The Austrians were the third owners bringing it back to Don Khone. So shall i take it back up the Mekong to Pakse roughly 160km as the bird flies. Or shall i take it out of the water, put it on a tractor to drive it round the impossible Liphy waterfall across the Cambodian border and down to Phnom Penh a good 300 km further with great stuff like big rocks just under the surface of the water, little islands everywhere and the occasional set of rapids to negotiate? This, to Mikes knowledge - he's lived here for 6 years, has never been done before by a Farang, ever.

What do you think?? All i need is someone to join me to split the costs and share the fun. So i email Anne-Sophie as we had planned to meet up in Cambodia and i had a feeling this would be her kind of fun.

I'll meet her in Stung Treng after a few days.

So as i said the boat can't be driven through Liphy waterfall so after getting the engine serviced we take it out of the water with some help from Mike, the other guests and a few Laos locals. This requires a few bottles of Lao Lao (local whiskey) and a few dollars. One of the guys will take the boat across the border for me tomorrow where I'll meet him and start the journey from Veun Kham, Cambodia.

The first part of Cambodia, The Ramsar wetlands, I have been told that this is beyond the capabilities of a "Farang" to drive through when he has only just started in a long tail and is going downstream. So a local from Veun Kham drives the section between here and Stung Treng where i wait for a night for Anne to arrive then head off with her the following day. I received some good training from Mike whilst staying on Don Khone, he showed me how to spot dangerous areas and how to control the boat through the rapids. However nothing is better than experience, within a few hours we found ourselves stuck on one of rocks just below the surface! It took about 5 minutes to wedge ourselves free. The main problem was that there are parts of the river where there is a strip of rapid water crossing the width and you have to drive along it to decide the best route through. Obviously when you're looking down the river you're not looking in the direction you're heading. After a few more hours we find a place to stay for the night, an island in the middle of the river. We set up camp, start a fire and have some dinner. Then bedtime, sleeping under a mosquito net under the stars. The stars here are like nothing i seen before, you look up one minute and see thousands and within a few seconds hundreds more appear this keeps happening the longer you look until the sky is literally full!

The next morning we wake with the sunrise have a cup of tea and move on down the river. We pass lots of villages and Tboug Khla is great practice for what we have in store for the next few days. Lots of dangerous sections of river with hidden rocks and sections of rapids. One we pass though has locals stood up in their boat fishing as if the water is hardly moving, we just about make it through! We stop for lunch in Sambour and decide to try to make it to Kratie, the next big town, that night. However first we have to get past the Kampi rapids. Anne had her first experience of driving just before Sambour and is going to drive the next section. Within ten minutes she has her first experience of fast water and hidden rocks, a few minutes later we find ourselves in the middle of Kampi rapids. A quick mid-river seat change! I try to find a way back up the river to get us out, no chance so we spend the next 20 minutes trying to get through without sinking. We bounce off a couple of rocks, one which nearly ends the journey, I would love to have photos to show you all just what its like but this really wasn't the time to be getting out a camera. Finally we made it through and a couple of hours later we were in Kratie. We found a guesthouse near the river which is a bonus as we take the engine out the boat to store it for security in the reception. This takes some explaining as the owner can't understand that we have our own boat as most people here want a boat ride across the river to see the river dolphins. Eventually though after finding a local who speaks English to explain to her she is more than happy to do this for us. We spend a few nights in Kratie replacing the petrol cap that i managed to drop in the Mekong just a few km short of Kratie and refreshing ourselves.

Next day we sail along the river which is beginning to become a lot easier to travel along, very wide, very deep with not too many obstacles to avoid. The afternoon is full of many stunning views and lots of interest from the locals as we drive past all of them waving or driving alongside us not really believing what they are seeing. The locals here use the river for everything from washing themselves to washing their buffalo, this helps them to survive on $1 a day. As the day is coming to an end we start to look for somewhere to camp for the night and as we are doing this we see some locals waving at us from the bank, but they seem to be waving differently to the normal wave you receive, as we grind to a halt we suddenly realise that we've just seen the sign the locals use for a sand bar! We step out into the water, push our boat off the sand and decide that it is now time to stop for the night. We collect some firewood and ask one of the local families if it is OK to stay on the beach? I think they understood and didn't mind at all, probably thought we were a little crazy though!

In the morning we have our standard breakfast, a cup of coffee and a tea, and start in the direction of Kompong Cham. We need some more ice for the cooler though so we pull off the river into Stung Trang, another place where i don't think they see too many westerners. Around this town the water becomes really rough, there don't seem to be any hidden dangers but it's like driving on the ocean with water crashing over the side of the boat due to this and some mechanical difficulties (oil leak) we stop for lunch and a swim and a quick rest then decide that we need to make it Kompong Cham to service the engine again. The engine is only one you'd find on a lawnmower and has done itself proud to get us this far, so some TLC is required. However the pull cord snaps as we decide to leave, my engine maintenance skills are limited but i manage to get it started, now we just hope we make it to KC without running out of petrol as i don't think it'll start again without proper attention. Two km short of KC disaster strikes, not concentrating on what I'm doing i hit the choke instead of the accelerator and in this heat the engine cuts straight out and won't start again! Out come the paddles and we have to paddle across the river and into town. We find a really helpful place to stay where they find a tuk tuk driver to take us to a garage to get the seals changed, a new cord put in and an oil change.

Trying to leave KC disaster strikes, the brand new pull cord snaps on the second pull! There are a couple of fishing trawlers parked next to us so i try to borrow a 10mm wrench to try to fix it, neither have one though so i walk back into town to buy one. Whilst i do this the young lads from the trawlers come down from their boats and get the engine fixed. I watch them do this as i have a feeling it may happen again. We take a drive past the bamboo bridge at KC and sure enough the petrol runs out and after filling the cord goes again. Forced to park at the nearest point, a locals vegetable patch - they grow on the slopping river bank during the dry season as the water drops up to 5m leaving the banks full of nutrients from the river. I manage to fix the pull and off we go. This night we stop on what we affectionately named "Bug Beach", as soon as the sun set we found ourselves engulfed by millions of flies. Halfway through cooking dinner we were joined by some locals who didn't mind us staying there, but we think they thought we were crazy for choosing the area with so many bugs! The next morning we treated ourselves to fried eggs on toast and after a quick, yet difficult ( their English bad - my Khmer worse) conversation with a group of local fishermen who bought us some rice for breakfast we were off again.

We stop late morning for ice in a town Srey Santhor which we believe is around 80-90 km from Phnom Penh, after speaking to a guy in the local restaurant we find we are are only 40km from PP! We can't believe how quick we've done this trip. We want to stop one more time after this but this proves to be difficult, as with all capital cities when you get close, the surrounding areas become a lot more developed and it proves hard to find somewhere to stay. So as we left Srey Santhor later than we should've we end up breaking Mike from Don Khones golden rule for boating on the Mekong - no night driving! This for me is possibly my scariest moment of the whole trip. Phnom Pehn is like most capitals, busy, and the river is no exception. Full of trawlers, ferries and fishing nets crossing the river we eventually make it and park up next to a plush restaurant in the heart of town. I don't think they can believe it when we ask to walk through the reception with our engine but they don't seem to mind.

So we made it!!!!! We did what at the start of our journey, still in Laos, the locals gave us a 50/50 chance of not just making it but surviving it. So now all we have to do is find someone who wants to be the next owner of Le Mekong Joueur. We hope that the boat will stay Farang owned, always sell for the same price $360 US (making it free for all that are lucky enough to own her) and make many more trips along this challenging yet highly exciting river! The guesthouse we end up moving to after a couple of days proves to be the right place - The Drunken Frog - where we find Chris, Tom and John. Three guys from the States who want to do what we have just done in reverse taking the boat back to Laos! Good luck boys, we both hope you have as good of an experience as we had!

As for Anne and I it's back to the dusty, sweaty, standard form of travel - the bus!

bye for now.................

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Photos

The passing on.....
Good luck and enjoy!

Comments

[conny]

Thank you
Hi Ben, thank you for your pictures and informations. Take good care of Anne-Sophie. Lots of love Conny

[captain]

awesome....i'm jelaous ;-)