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Published: January 11th 2013
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After about 2 wonderful weeks in Thailand, I took the next obvious step on the travellers agenda: the 2 day / 1 night slowboat to Luang Prbang. I conveniently booked the trip for 1750 baht at the Pai aYa service bus station for January 3rd. We were supposed to leave Pai in a minivan by 6pm to arrive at the Thai border town Chiang Khong around midnight and spend the night there. Unfortunately, we were delayed about 3 hours and did not get to Chiang Khong until 3 a.m. after the most uncomfortable ride I've so far in South East Asia.
The next morning we had to wake up at 7 a.m. only to realize that we wouldn't leave for the border until 8 a.m. and only wait for a crappy breakfast. Tired and grumpy, we all waited until the last people exchanged their baht into USD and finally made our way to the Lao border. We lined up for our Thai exit stamp, which took about 15-20 minutes. After we got the stamp, we boarded a small wooden boat to cross the Khong river and go through Lao immigration. Here is where the chaos started. A huge hub of
people were pushing towards the visa window and it seemed like all these Western people forgot how order works. So, we had no choice but to throw ourselves in there and fill out the visa application and the arrival form. After that was done, we handed in our passports and the forms at the visa-on-arrival window and had to wait for them to processed. Afterwards, someone from the visa-fee window would hold up your passport, you pay the fee and get on with it. So, it is absolutely riddleing me why the hell all these white people would push towards the window, when their name would be called out anyway. I guess being in a strange country makes you do irrational things and forget how to form a proper line.
So, after about an hour we all had our visas and jumped on a tuk tuk that brought us to some restaurat near the river, where our guide gave us a lesson on how to avoid scams in Pak Beng, our overnight stop. I'm pretty sure he tried to scare us into buying a room at his guesthouse, but what the hell, it was only 200 baht per person,
so it was ok and it saved us the trouble of looking for a room ourselves. So, finally, around 11 a.m. we boarded the actual slow boat that would take us to Luang Prabang.
The boat ride was beautiful! The seats were more or less comfortable and the scenery was stunning! We passed by rural villages, lush green hills and white sandy beaches. And with a couple of beerlaos, the 6 hours went by superfast.
We arrived in Pag Beng around 5 p.m. and went straight to our pre-booked guesthouse, which was actually not so bad. It was clean and we had a hot shower in our private bathroom, so 200 Baht per person seems to be a good price. After a refreshing shower, my current travel buddy and I met 2 other girls from the boat for dinner. We walked into one of the many same-same restaurants and ordered some mediocre food. After we'd been shouted at and refused change by the resturant owner, we had a strange feeling about Lao and kind of missed Thailand already. But, we decided that it's probably just Pak Beng that sucked and not all Lao people are dick heads. I
fell into bed around 8 p.m., as I had managed to catch a cold in Thailand I was especially tired. I slept through the whole night until we had to re-embark the boat again at 9 a.m. to make our final jounrey up the Mekong to Luang Prabang. Half way down the road, our engine overheated and our boat broke down. So, we all head to get off, and hang around the beach while locals tried to sell us dried fish and some pretty woven scaves, that were actually really nice. After about 45 minutes, the engine was fixed and we continued on the river. Apart from that, nothing too spectacular happened. We passed some more beautiful, untouched nature and unspoilt local villages and arrived in Luang Prabang with a 2 hour delay at 5 p.m.
The slow boat is definitely an amazing and unforgettable experience that I think every traveller going this way should do!
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