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Published: October 25th 2011
After crossing the Mekong into Laos, we headed straight to the Immigration desk, got our visas (1 month, $35), got stamped in and then found a hotel to crash for the night with the intention of catching the slow boat to Luang Prabang the next day. The hotel charged us in Thai baht which suited us just fine as we didn’t have any Laos Kip, something which didn’t matter at all as everywhere accepts baht. We later found an ATM which was great as we could stash our baht for later when we crossed back into Thailand, a wallet full of kip won’t get you very far in Thailand.
We asked around about the slow boat and the general consensus was to go down to the ferry ‘pier’ for around 9am in the morning, so all that was left to do was head to the nearest restaurant and order ourselves some fabled Beer Lao, reputedly the best beer in SE Asia and something I hadn’t tasted since leaving this exact town three years ago. It’s actually been available in many places on the trip so far but I’ve shunned it in favour of local brews choosing the authentic experience of
sipping it in its home country, it didn’t let me down, it was just as refreshing as I remembered.
The next day we took the walk down to the slow boat ‘pier’ in the light drizzle cursing the Lying Planet’s map that suggested it wasn’t far at all and arrived about 8 in the morning. We were directed to a ticket booth where we could get tickets and discovered we were among the first people there, with tickets numbered 5-8. I was also surprised that they made us buy tickets for the boys, they were half price but still not cheap at 110,000 kip each (£8.75), we’ve paid less than that to take them on flights!
We’ve actually done this trip before but going in the opposite direction so we had an idea of what to expect, I read though that in this direction it’s a lot busier, which couldn’t be too difficult as the last time there was hardly anyone on board and we could wander around freely. The last time I also remember it having hard wooden benches to sit on and as they were selling cushions at the pier we bought a couple to alleviate
the pressure on our delicate western behinds. We hung around at a restaurant at the pier for ages before we could get on our designated boat and were pleasantly surprised… The hard wooden benches were gone and were replaced with soft cushiony reclining seats ripped straight out of a ford fiesta (or some other vehicle). I pushed the thought of the wasted money on the cushions to the back of my mind as I settled my ass into the spongy softness, thinking “this shouldn’t be too bad at all”. Another surprise was that the seats were numbered meaning we had designated seats and as the boys had tickets we had four of them, so plenty of space to play.
The boat quickly filled to bursting point, as was expected (something the LP actually got right) and we left around 11am, pushing off into the swirling brown mass that is the Mighty Mekong, the 10th longest river in the world (what a crap statistic, who’d want to be 10th at anything). We’ve actually been dreading this trip for the last few days, two days of 8 hours on a boat, how the hell were we going to keep the boys
occupied in a tiny space for such a long time. As is usual though the time flew, the monotony of the surroundings quickly grew tiresome so we were left to entertain with all the supplies we carry around, pens, crayons, videos on the laptop and food. It’s amazing how much time you can kill eating, we slowly worked our way through the bag of sandwiches we got made back at Huay Xai then started on the biscuits and snacks, promising ourselves that we’ll ply them with fruit at the first opportunity to alleviate some of the guilt by sedating them with so much junk.
It actually only took 6 hours to reach our first destination, Pak Beng, a small town on the bank of the Mekong whose sole purpose is to service the tourists on this journey as an overnight stop. It was actually a lot nicer than we remembered and as the guesthouses all have representatives waiting for the boat to arrive it took us no time at all to find a reasonable, dirt cheap place to stay. Once we’d dumped all our stuff we had one intention… Hot food! Our strongest memory was of a really good
Indian restaurant in the town so that’s what we went looking for. It took us all of two minutes to find it as it’s tiny and there’s not a really a lot here and sat down to eat, letting the boys blow off some energy charging round with some local kids… One day done, one day to go…
The next morning was pretty much the same, we grabbed more food and got on the boat, only this time the boys spotted all the fruit we’d bought and demolished it in seconds leaving us with little else but the instant noodles available on board. Instant noodles… They really are just crap aren’t they? You’d of thought they’d be bored of them by now, but they can’t seem to get enough of them. I think the ritual of preparation has something to do with it, adding the hot water, stirring it, waiting for it to cool, the anticipation of wondering whether they will actually be edible or not. I think they like it as it feels like they’re actually ‘cooking’ something rather than just being served it and I suppose we shouldn’t complain as it kills loads of time.
After
eight hours, which actually started to feel it towards the end we arrived in Luang Prabang, somewhere we’ve really been looking forward to getting to as we really loved it on our previous visit. Arriving at the pier was much the same as at Pak Beng with a throng of guesthouse representatives waiting to entice you to their particular establishment. It didn’t take long to find somewhere suitable so off we went to check in before again finding somewhere to fill ourselves up with something decent.
We ended up spending two weeks in Luang Prabang, and it’s hard to describe what we did to fill our days because we did very little. We loved every moment of it! We visited the nearby waterfalls of
Kuang Si which were actually really good, took a rather uninspiring boat ride and Faye did a dying and weaving
course which she thoroughly enjoyed but other than that we wandered round temple hopping and just enjoying being in one of our favourite places in Asia. We also ate, ate a lot. The food in Luang Prabang was good, there were plenty of restaurants and bakeries and we couldn’t not buy cakes every evening at the
night market to enjoy back at the room. Also we found a new beer called Nam Khong. It’s only recently hit the Laos market and dare I say it, as I’m sure I will be unanimously branded a fool by the backpacker community for this, I actually preferred it to Beer Lao. Will it be able to compete, who knows? All I know is that Laos now has two excellent beers… Even more reason to hang around longer!
A couple of early mornings we took it in turns to watch the Buddhist monks perform their morning
alms, something Luang Prabang is famous for and something we failed to see last time we were here as we were just too damn lazy to get our asses out of bed in the morning. I wasn’t sure what to expect, hoping that I and all the other tourists weren’t going to be too intrusive and was pleasantly surprised to see that virtually all the tourists present watching were actually quite respectful. Of course there are always a couple of dicks who think that it’s ok to shove their camera lens in the face of someone, regardless of what they’re doing but on
the whole it was pretty good.
Sadly the time wore on and we had to move on… Sad to leave Luang Prabang we headed out on a torturously slow bus (7 hours) to Vang Vieng, we didn’t really want to stop there but we had to break up the journey to Vientiane and it’s the best place for it. Vang Vieng doesn’t really hold a lot of interest for a couple in their early 30’s with two toddlers in tow, unless the weather is good as the surrounding scenery is spectacular. Sadly while we were there the weather was terrible and we couldn’t see any of it and as the main activity in town is floating down the river on a tractor inner tube while getting dangerously wasted at the many riverside bars we were left with very little to do. We didn’t stay long before moving on to Vientiane.
Last time we were here we didn’t stop at Vientiane, instead choosing to head straight to Vang Vieng to partake in some of the activities mentioned earlier (oh the joys of responsibility free travel) so this time we figured we’d stop and check it out. The first thing
we realized is just how expensive it is, we had to look pretty hard to find any reasonably priced places to stay and a lot of places were full. We did find somewhere though and it was actually pretty nice, which left us a few days to explore the capital. Our theme in Laos continued with us not doing an awful lot, there were a lot of play areas for the boys which was nice as it gave them the opportunity to burn off energy surrounded by kids rather than adults and we also found an amazing café/bakery frequented mainly by the expat community which not only had amazing food (not cheap, but lasagna to die for), but a great indoor and outdoor play area, meaning we could relax with our meals while the boys enjoyed themselves…
We also visited a few of the Wats in the city, Faye went on another silk dying course (she preferred the first one) and of course visited
Pha That Luang which was pretty good. We also took a tuk tuk quite far out of town to visit the
Buddha park which was a complete waste of time and effort as it was complete crap. I
expected an actual park with the statues dotted around, but it was just a field crammed with statues and nothing else, and quite a small field too, I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to anyone coming to the city.
Leaving Laos we decided to take the new and only train operating in Laos. The station at Thanaleng is outside the capital so not very convenient and there is literally nothing else there, just a train station in the middle of nowhere, it does have the facilities to get stamped out though and we had to pay a departure tax, which we paid in baht as we’d got rid of all our kip by that point. The train then just shuttles you over the Mekong and the border to Nong Khai in Thailand taking about 15 minutes, where you get stamped into Thailand at the train station. From there you can then take an overnight sleeper train to Bangkok which is what we did.
We enjoyed our time in Laos, and it would be hard not to as it really is an amazing country filled with amazing people, but it did make us realize something. Now that we’re treading over
old ground we’re not bothered about the journey part of travelling anymore, we just want to get to the destination. Did we gain anything by doing the slow boat again? No, we didn’t see or experience anything different from last time, other than the lack of relaxation as we had two toddlers to entertain. We wished we had just flown to Luang Prabang, enjoying more time in one of our favorite places in Asia. Sadly the flights out of Luang Prabang were ridiculously expensive otherwise we certainly would have flown out, but in the future if there’s a flight to where we want to go, there’s not a comfortable overland option and the price difference isn’t horrendous we’re definitely flying. I’m sure when we get to somewhere new the journey will seem exciting again but at the moment it’s just not worth it.
In the meantime though the journey continues, onwards… to Cambodia.
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denidax
Deni, Dax and Ella
lovely picture!