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Published: February 17th 2007
BeerLao!
A few beers in Huay Xai before our boat trip the next dayWe spent our first night in Laos in Huay Xai, which consisted of one street with a Wat at the top of about 100 steps leading from the main street up the hill. Immediately Laos seemed a poorer country. One thing which was good, the beer was cheaper! We checked into our room then tried to pay. She wanted 200 baht (they still dealt in baht here as well because it's on the border with Thailand) and I gave her a 1000 baht note. She couldn't give me any change so she told us to pay later. Well she actually couldn't speak any English but this is what we took her to mean. She was the first person we had dealt with that didn't speak English in South East Asia. Maybe this was a sign of things to come in Laos? We later booked our slow boat (it would take 2 days) to Luang Prabang with one of the guesthouses recommeded in the LP Guide.
The next morning we arrived at the guesthouse to chaos. There were lots of people trying to check out and others for the slowboat. We gave our passports to one guy who then just proceeded
The slowboats
One of these must be ours, shame the had to cram everybody on one boat when there were so many! to put the right amount of Kip into them for each days boat fare. We got driven to the pier where we then each bought our own ticket. As far as we could work out all we had piad for was for them to convert baht into kip and transfer to the pier (it came to 25,000 kip about 1.25 pounds, so not that much really!) We got onto the boat at 9.50am, put our bags in the hold and got a hard wooden bench seat to sit on, which we would have for the next 7 hours! The boat was seriously overloaded with over 130 people onboard, we had been told it held a mximum of 70. They had put extra seats in the aisles so more people could get on.
It was chaos again getting off the boat. We got our main packs then had to wait ages to actually get down to the front of the boat to get off. When we did we had to balance along a 5m gang plank about 5 m off the ground to get off. Of course by this time it was dark. Pak Beng was a very small place
Filled to capacity
Are there no safety regulations in this country? Of course not! with just one road winding up the hill. We got a room with two beds and ajoining bathroom and went to eat, we were starving. We both ate a dish each then decided to order a second as we were still so hungry!
We got up early the next day and went to see about the boat ticket for Luang Prabang. We were told you just paid on the boat. So we got our bags together and got the sandwiches our landlady had made for the journey. We were one of the first on the boat so we got some really nice comfortable seats like ones on a coach! The boat journey today was pretty cold, I was wearing me fleece and waterproof but it was still chilly. After 7 hours we reached Luang Prabang. It was around 7pm and had gone dark. We asked at a few places but could only find rooms with a double bed or one for $15 a night. Eventually tired and hungry we stayed in one of the $15 rooms.
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crammed boat rides
Good job you had lots of beautiful scenery to look at from your hard wooden bench on the crammed boat! It was a bit like that on the longtail boats in Thailand but at least we were only on them for 20 minutes max. not 7 hours! All good experience!