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Slow boat down the Mekong

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007
The last time we took a multi-day boat trip, up the Niger River from Mopti to Timbuktu in Mali earlier this year, it didn’t turn out too well. It was supposed to take 3 days / 2 nights, but ended up taking 7 days / 6 nights, and we slept on top of bags of rice on the stationary boat for all six nights.Suffice to say, this one went a whole lot better. We crossed the border (by boat) from Thailand to Laos three days ago, then yesterday morning set out from Houay Xai for the two-day slow boat trip down the Mekong to the imperial capital Luang Prabang. Only a few years ago a trickle of travellers used to do this on cargo boats (Laos only opened its doors to the outside world in 1990), but it’s a fully-fledged tourist journey now, so we shared a boat with about 100 other foreigners. Thankfully, there were no sacks of rice to contend with (though the wooden seats were pretty uncomfortable after a while) and we didn’t even have to sleep on the boat, stopping instead at a town called Pak Beng, which by virtue of being on the Mekong and roughly halfway between Houay Xai and Luang Prabang and for no other reason, suddenly finds itself with a dozen guesthouses as well as some luxury bungalows and all sorts of crazy development compared with the other settlements we passed.

Yesterday was pretty overcast as it has been for most of the last week, but today was a glorious day, easily the best day weather-wise of this young trip, and I was able to get some great photos of the river and its surrounds. The Mekong is usually about 100-150m wide and for most of the 10-11 hours we spent traveling down it, thick and pristine jungle rose up steeply from the banks on both sides. It was quite breathtaking at times, certainly the most beautiful scenery we’ve seen in two weeks since leaving Paris. We passed a few villages along the way but the area is very remote and mostly it was just uninterrupted jungle scenery.

Now that we’ve done this trip and are in Luang Prabang, I feel like our journey is really beginning. Hopefully Laos will be as enjoyable as we thought it would be – early signs are good…

Meanwhile, my first attempt at using the web in Laos shows me that high-speed access is a thing of the (Thai) past. Hopefully by the time you read this, photos of the boat trip will have finished uploading and be posted here.

Posted in Asia, Laos, Southeast Asia, Travel | 1 Comment »