Pak Beng (1 Feb 2011)

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Tuesday 1st February 2011

In the morning we were rudely awaken by loud and ferocious knocking on our door shouting 10 minutes till we leave for breakfast... we were a little perplexed as we’d barely had 5 hours sleep and had been informed when we booked that the guest house was opposite the boarder so it shouldn’t matter to them what time we got up. We got taken (all 12 of us with our bags) on the back of a pick-up truck down the road to another hotel for a very basic breakfast, and then told we would have to wait until 10am to go to the boarder which was still miles away... unwilling to wait for 3 hours, we insisted they take us immediately as we had not paid this companies extortionate fee to get the boat to Luang Prabang (as everyone else had) and wanted to get through the boarder so we could find a boat.

Eventually we were taken to Huay Xai the Thai / Laos border where they had the most convoluted process ever; collecting many dozens of passports at the same time before checking them and individually before calling names out so there was a mass of people huddled around the tiny window hoping they would hear their name, who just happened to be blocking anyone new from handing their passport over in the first place.

We got through customs, and found a boat at the dock for half the price our transfer company had been charging. The ironic thing was, when they eventually turned up, they were on the exact same boat, well, they would have been if they hadn’t arrived two hours after us. Where we had found a seat, there were now none left! In-fact, the owner kept telling more and more people to get on when there was no room left to even stand (not so good when it is a two day journey). Under duress, with a growing revolt by the passengers, the owner saw sense and put on a second boat to deal with the ever growing crowd, although he kept insisting his long boat would comfortably carry 150 – there were well over 200 by this point.

The boat was slow, it made very useful for taking photos, but after a while the monotony of the scenery became boring and we resorted to sleeping and reading books.

Arriving late at Pak Beng for an overnight stop to break up the boat journey, we stayed as close to the port as possible to avoid lugging our bags too far and had an Indian meal before bed.

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Comments

[Mark]

Cant be a suprise
you've been in asia long enough now to expect something like this, just put it down to experience & when you're home its another memory. I got minivan from Luang Prabang to Vang Vieng, told 5 hour journey, must have forgotten to mention 3 changes, hanging around waiting & more like 8 hours!