1 slowboat, 2 days, 1 broken propellor


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Asia » Laos » West » Ban Houayxay
February 20th 2007
Published: February 20th 2007
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Next stop after the Gibbon Experience was Luang Prabang, however to get there from Huay Xai you had to get on a boat for two days down the Mekong. We had bought our boat tickets from an agency in the town to make sure we got on the boat but when we went to pick the tickets up we found that she merely gave us some money to go and buy the tickets from the ticket office, needless to say the money she gave us back was less than that which we had given her - we felt a bit duped. There were no problems getting the tickets but we had to have our passports checked and the immigration man noticed that Helen’s visa ran out in 3 days time and she wasn’t going to be able to leave the country in time - whoops!

We got onto the boat with plenty of time to spare so that we got a ‘good’ seat but we soon realised that this was merely how far you were from the engine because the seats were small upright wooden benches with very thin cushions on - it did not look like we were going to have a comfortable couple of days! We left on time and soon stopped to load more cargo on - this time it was some big bags of cloth that were put in the aisle. This actually turned out to be a godsend because they were a lot more comfortable than the benches!

We carried on down the river for an hour or so without much happening. The river is really low at the moment because it is dry season and you can see the high water mark about 30 feet above us - it would be completely different to see in the wet season. As a result of this low water though it is important to follow the channel. We soon felt the boat sliding along the bottom of the river and then a bang and we stopped going forwards. The boat people started running up and down and one flagged down a boat that had just passed who returned and towed us to the bank (which was a quite nice beach!). It turned out that we had sheared off the useful bits on the propeller so we had a nice break on the beach having our lunch while they fixed it.

The rest of the journey to Pak Beng was fairly uneventful apart from a couple of rapids. However once we got to Pak Beng - our overnight stop - it was a little bit crazy. We got there at dusk and they had to make room for our boat to moor which consequently meant that we were not by the steps to get up the steep rock face. Helen went on ahead to find us a room and I got the boats off the boat in the stampede. I had to get a local to carry Helen’s bag, which was a good plan because he pulled me up the whole way too!

Our accommodation was quite basic and we were both quite thankful to have someone else to share it with - Pak Beng has a bit of a seedy reputation, in fact one of the girls that I met on the boat was offered, ‘weed, opium, Lao boyfriend’.

Day two went by much smoother - that is other than two boat loads of people having to fit on one boat! On arrival in Luang Prabang Helen showed me to the guesthouse that she had stayed at before and then headed for the bus station - I did not envy her the 11 hour bus journey she was about to get to Vientiane!


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