The Slow Boat to Luang Prabang

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Relax while drifting down the mighty Mekong river for two days on a slow boat. Nothing to do but watch the world go by. Sounds idyllic, doesn't it? The reality was a little different!

We used Easy Trip to make this journey. They are the Thai arm of Discovery Laos , and their office was conveniently located just round the corner from our hotel in Chiang Khong. When they collected us at 0830 in a brand new pick up, so new the plastic covers were still on the seats, we suspected we might have paid too much!

First we were taken to Thai immigration on one side of the Friendship Bridge which links Thailand to Laos. Those formalities completed, we waited for a bus to take us over the bridge to Laos immigration. This time there were two queues. One was to submit your visa request (and pay an extra US $1 for not having a photo!) while the other was to pay your fee of US $20. We were able to pay in Thai Baht which was a surprise, and that meant we didn't have to break into our emergency dollar fund.

That took quite a while and then we were loaded onto a tuk tuk and taken to a house where we were "briefed" about the two days ahead. Pretty much everything we were told in this "brief" was incorrect. Some of it was a blatant lie. Don't listen to what they tell you. There is an ATM at the overnight stop so you don't need to change any money at their awful rates. There is food (well, pot noodle, crisps and chocolate) and drink available on the boat so you don't actually need to pay their exorbitant rates for a sandwich or a bottle of water. They are expensive on the boat, but they are availablexcellent. Despite their promise that "good seats near the front of the boat" have been reserved for your group, it may well be a free-for-all fight for any seat because they have overbooked the boat.

Eventually we got to the boat and we all felt quite angry that the seating plan had been abandoned "because there were lots of people"! Clearly safety isn't a priority as there were over 100 on board and I doubt the number of life vests reached double figures.

The only seats we could find were at the back next to the only toilet (to be shared by over 100 people) and very close to the engine. Once we got moving conversation was impossible because of the noise and we found ourselves surrounded by drunken backpackers whose sole aim seemed to be to drink the equivalent volume of the Mekong's waters in beer! The scenery was beautiful but it was quite difficult to relax and enjoy it in such an environment.

We arrived at Pak Beng some six hours later, just as the sun was setting. Instead of pulling up alongside the floating jetty we then had to literally walk the plank. An 8 inch wide wobbly plank of wood led onto the jagged rocks. One slip could have been very painful indeed. One Dutch lady ended up in the water. Luckily her bags did not.

After scrambling across the rocks and up the stairs, we were not, as promised, met by anyone from our guest house. It turned out to be just 200m up the hill but that's not the point. In fact our "briefing" had led us to believe it was 1-2km from the jetty to the accommodation, which is why booking in advance was necessary. Our package came with the guest house included but we'd have been pretty angry if we had booked something because of the "brief".

The guest house was basic but comfortable enough for one night. The many restaurants serve pretty much the same fare and it is pretty similar to Thai food but much more expensive. The place wasn't exactly rocking and after a quick beer we turned in for an earlyish night.

Breakfast was pretty good thanks to the French influence on Laos. We also bought some muffins for later in the day to supplement our included lunch of one sandwich. At the quayside it wasnt such a mad scramble to get on the boat and we safely negotiated the floating jetty. There were plenty of seats available and it was a much more respectable boat with comfortable seats (although they were still not fixed to the floor), lots of life vests and two, yes TWO, toilets for the 100 passengers to share! Even "Captain Kyle" had sobered up for the day. That didn't stop the Canadian (whose name everyone knew for some reason) from delaying our departure because he had left his ticket in his room. Grrrrr! This time we sat away from the engine and day two was much more what we had expected day one to be. Or had our expectations been lowered THAT much?!!

9 hours of spectacular scenery later, we arrived at the port of Luang Prabang. Nobody realised we were there because the port is some 8km out of town and it seemed that the crew were reluctant to tell us! A shared tuk tuk then took us into town where our Laos adventure was waiting for us.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Backwaters
Love these kind of photos. A nice part of the world