BootsnAll Travel Network



Chiang Kong, Thailand to Laos

The next morning I awoke feeling a little queezy after mixing several different alcohols and beers the night before. We had to get up early and get over to Laos to start our journey down the mighty Mekong River. The Mekong River starts in Tibet and flows through Nepal, China, Thailand, Laos, and ends in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon). It spans 4800 kilometers and is a great system of travel for a lot of local villagers etc.

We got all our bags together, ate breakfast and Bob and I drove the bags down to the border. To get to Laos we had to take this little nothing boat across the river and then to immigration. We all got our visas from the lady from the side of the road from the day before, had the immigration officer check out our passport in Thailand and we were off to Laos. Also for future reference it is prenounced Lao the “S” is silent. We got our passports stamped with a little red thingy (thats for you andy) and got the all important signature. Our tour leader had told us of countless stories where immigration conveniently forgets to give you the extra stamp which results in a 100+ dollar fine to get out of Laos at the border between Laos and Vietnam. So we all double checked to make sure we had our visas and the little red box thingy with the signature and we were off.

This is where we met our local guide for the next few days Chan. Chan was 27 and a local guide working for a company that Intrepid employs to help them with their tours. Intrepid has a really great philosophy of working with local small companies to help keep the local economies going. Chan was one great example of that. The next step was to exchange some money at the border. There would be no atms for the next 2-4 nights so I had to take out enough money to last. I changed 40 USD and got back 378,000 Lao Kip haha. It is a lot to deal with let me tell you fiddling around and counting hundreds of thousands of dollars. Luckily the common bill is the 20,000 Kip note, but when you get down to the small ones and bigger ones it starts to get a little crazy.

Like I said today we would start our journey down the mighty Mekong River. The mode of transportation was a really nice longboat. It was really long, about 37 meters long to be exact (over 100 feet). It was narrow about 2 meters long (6+ feet). The boat had seats that were taken out of cars, benches to eat, a squatter, and a nice family as well. The views were spectacular and I was snapping away like crazy. Our first stop was this local village Chan knew off. Chan explained in his typical longwinded manner about the village and villages in Laos. After that we took a look around the village observing villagers pounding down mountain rice, washing clothing and babies from several water spouts scattered throughout the village.  It felt a little weird being in the village.  I felt like an intruder in someone’s home, snapping away with my camera as to say “look Daddie it’s a…,” like when your at the zoo.  My uneasiness continued until about an hour after we left.  When I was still in the village I had decided internally that I was going to buy anything that was offered to me by the villagers.  They offered nothing.  Almost like they didn’t need or want my money.  They might have been poor, but it all seemed pretty self sustaining and simple.  I was a little disappointed because I really wanted to buy something that was actually handmade.  Everything I had previously purchased was supposedly “handmade,” all a crock of shit.  Most likely the stuff I had bought was made in China, Thailand or wherever, but I like to think that some of the stuff was in fact handmade.  I knew that the bracelets in Chiang Mai, Taipei and Kuala Lumpur I had gotten from the Monks and that young girl were probably hand made, but other than that, probably all factory made.  After the village we floated down the river till we finally arrived in a small village along the Mekong called Pekbing.  This was a nothing town only modernized because it has become a backpacker stop on the way to Luang Prabang.  Chan said about 300 people lived there, if that.  It was either a shop, market, guesthouse or restaurant and that was it.  They just got internet there, one place and it was extremely expensive by Laos standards at 500 kip a minute.  Currently I am paying about 100 kip a minute which is about 1 cent, not too shabby in Laos.  Most of the power in Pekbing is run by coal burning generators which are switched off during the day.  We arrvied in Pekbing and were met by local kids and young adults itching to carry our bags to our hotel for a measely 10,000 kip or 1 USD. I had no problem letting them carry my pack.  It was hot and heavy, my back could use the rest.  Hostel had no power.  Generator was off when we got there, which meant no fan which meant it was really hot and muggy in the room.  For dinner we all decided to have another banquet.  I wasn’t that keen on it but it seemed like everyone else was.  So we once again we ordered lots of dishes I paid double what I should have paid and wasn’t really that happy and really full.

In between dinner and arriving we went to visit a temple at the end of Pekbing.  It was alright, Chan spouted off some info about it while we sat and basted in the late evening heat.  After dinner we walked through town and saw the nasty local food market.  Flies everywhere on the food, around the food, it was not that appealing.  I then had my first real massage of the trip, it was alright, nothing special, and I managed to fall asleep during it.  I was beat from sitting on the boat all day.  At the end of the night I bought the famous whiskey lao or Lao Lao as the locals call it.  It is some strong stuff and apparently Chan said that good stuff will be about 80 percent alcohol, firebreathing stuff like moonshine.  I got the cheap stuff Chan said because he smelt it, and tried to light it on fire several times, shook it up, did all these tests and nothing worked.  Oh well, it still smelt strong as heck.  After wondering around I went to bed, it was another early morning and the second leg of floating down the Mekong to get to Luang Prabang, Laos.



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