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The Mighty Mekong

Friday, June 26th, 2009

Right now, I’m sitting on the mighty Mekong River in Laos in a slow boat as we head for Pak Beng, the half way point in our journey to Luang Prabang. We’ll stay in Pak Beng overnight before we get back on the boat for another day. It’s great to finally be here as it was one of the things that really excited me when we first started planning this whole adventure. The boat is packed with foreigners, mostly young backpackers and we’re so glad to be travelling in the low season, which means we actually each got a seat. The stories of overcrowded boats were a bit frightening so we were relieved to find our boat has only 37 passengers compared with 100 or more that sometimes happens.
Yesterday we arrived in Chiang Khong, the border town after a bus ride from Chiang-Rai to Chiang-Saen and then a songtaeuw ride(taxi-ute kind of thing). We stopped at the Golden Triangle and saw the border of Burma, Thailand and Laos. Very cool! Our guesthouse was right on the Mekong River and we could look across and see Laos on the other side. The girls were fascinated by the fact that right across the river we could see a different country. Charlotte was sure that we needed to go in a plane to get to another country and couldn’t figure out that in the morning we would cross the river and be in Laos.
So we woke early ready to make our way down the road to Thailand Immigration and then across the river to Laos and fill out 12 forms to get our Laos visa. We finally got everything processed and made it onto the boat only to wait over an hour in the scorching heat before the boat left. We’ve now been on the boat for a few hours and we’re all coping quite well. Tonight, we’ll be spending the night in Pak Beng which only has electricity from 6pm to 10pm. We’re not looking forward to a night with no fan because it is so hot. I don’t imagine we’ll get much sleep!
I’m really enjoying being here. Even though the boat isn’t that comfortable, the engine is noisy, the Mekong is a great brown slug of a river and in a few hours the girls are probably going to be cranky, hungry and at each other’s throats, I still love this type of travelling. It’s so exciting to go places that are a bit unknown. Where we are now is a common backpacker route so it’s not at all scary. The girls are proving to be hardy little travellers who don’t seem to be phased by much at all. They can cope easily with squat toilets and a bin in the corner to put your used toilet paper. Maybe all our years of camping have been good preparation!
The scenery is now getting more jungle like and as we look out we can see villages in the distance and people fishing from their long-tail boats. Although, it’s a very slow journey it really is a great way to see how people live.
I’m sure by the this time tomorrow I will have seen enough though and will be looking forward to Luang Prabang which has a strong French influence(lots of pastries and baguettes, yippee!!)
(2 and a half days later)
Well, we are now in Luang Prabang after surviving our 2 day boat epic. At the end of the first day we arrived in Pak Beng and were whisked away by an offer of a cheap guesthouse. We had read the Ayres experience of Pak Beng and were all ready to avoid getting money extorted from us by the numerous guys who try to carry your bags up the hill from the boat. A very tempting offer when you have 4 tired children and 7 or so bags!
Anyway, we went with a guy who offered us a guesthouse for $5NZ a room and he even carried Charlotte up the hill. The rooms were great so for $15 we got 3 rooms, a bargain! As usual in rural South-East Asia we were woken early by roosters crowing and dogs barking. We went and found breakfast, got baguettes for lunch on the boat and headed for the wharf. It was nice to be leaving Pak Beng where it felt as if everyone was trying to rip you off. Tim was offered drugs as soon as we got to our guesthouse, and poor Michaella had a bad experience when we sent her and Maddie off in the morning to buy snacks for the boat. We were all trying to get our head around the Lao money(kip). We gave her 50,000 kip which is about $10 and they went to get some snacks. She came back with a small box of crackers and a bag of lollies. She had thought the 50,000 note was a 5,000 and the woman at the shop saw her trying to figure it out and told her, “yes,yes, it’s a 5,000” and took it. Tim marched back to the shop with her. They saw him coming and all tried to duck for cover but eventually came out and said, “oh, sorry, sorry, I tried to follow her and give her money back”. That was a good lesson in keeping your wits about you!
Day 2 of the boat ride was a bit different from Day 1. Once again we got to the boat early to try to get some good seats. We were told to be there at 8am. At 10am we finally left absolutely packed with people on the floor everywhere. The first day there were two boats, but it seemed that they ditched one boat and stuck us all on one boat, along with various sacks of rice and even a chicken tied on the roof. Charlotte kept asking why we weren’t going and where is the driver and what IS he doing? Finally, after one question too many I told her to go and ask him herself, not actually thinking she would. So, off she went, stepping over people and went straight to the front of the boat and said, “When are we leaving?”I don’t know if he understood but he just smiled and said something in Lao to her.
We had a very uncomfortable trip crammed on wooden bench seats where your knees touch the bench in front. We all took turns to lie on the floor in the aisle or even under the seats. We were so glad to have 2 inflatable air mattresses with us. The backpackers on the boat seemed to cope with the trip by drinking copious amounts of Laos beer.
At about 5.30pm we arrived in Luang Prabang and got a tuktuk to SpicyLaos Backpackers. It was the only accommodation I could find on-line and I thought it would be good to have something booked after the boatride. It was pretty grotty and overpriced so we stayed the night there and then in the morning found a cheaper much nicer guesthouse right on the main street in walking distance of everything.
Luang Prabang is a really beautiful city, with lots of French architecture and strong French influence in food as well. It’s strange to be in South-East Asia and baguettes being the cheapest meal option! Quite nice though, after having no decent bread for a few months.
Yesterday we met a family from Nelson who we spent the day with today. Thumbs up for the Barkers t-shirts with the map of NZ on them. We would never have met them if we hadn’t noticed Peter’s(the Dad) t-shirt. It’s so nice to meet kiwis when you’re away(or even Aussies). Straight away you seem to be able to relate to them. We teamed up and got a taxi to a waterfall where we all swam and had a great time. We were so surprised at the beautiful blue water and the girls had a blast swinging from a rope into the river and jumping from the top of the waterfall into the river.
Tomorrow we’re going to hire bikes for the day and head to the museum as well as doing a bit of schoolwork. We plan to stay here for a few more days before heading south to Vang Vieng, the adventure town of Lao where there’s all sorts of cool things to do like tubing down a river, climbing, caving etc. I’m sure we’ll have lots of adventures there.

photos coming……..

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Visitors from NZ!

Friday, June 26th, 2009

href=’http://blogs.bootsnall.com/adventure/files/2009/06/changimai-trekking-207.jpg’ title=’changimai-trekking-207.jpg’>For the last week we’ve had Karen, Hayley and Willem(my sister and children) with us from NZ. We’ve loved showing them around Chiang-Mai and just hanging out, eating out at lots of different places together and shopping! We had lots of laughs riding in tuk-tuks, going to the local markets and flash shopping malls . It was so nice for the girls to have their cousins with them to enjoy it together.
While they were here we booked an overnight trip which involved trekking,elephant riding,white-water rafting and bamboo rafting. The place we stayed was at a Lahu hilltribe village in very basic huts with no electricity. We all slept in one room with mosquito nets over our beds. We were all wondering what the food would be like but were pleasantly surprised by the fantastic meal of crunchy fried chicken, potato curry and stir fried veges. The first day was quite a gruelling day of uphill walking and Karen was wondering why on earth she wasn’t sitting on a beach in Phuket instead of sweating and puffing up hill in 33 degree heat. The second day was all downhill so that would have been good news if it hadn’t have been raining quite hard which made it super slippery. Karen had her special guide who looked after her and held out her hand in the dodgy bits while singing various classic English songs with his own special version of the words. It was very amusing!
We made it downhill to the waterfall where some swam and then had a short walk to the elephant camp. Riding the elephant was quite a neat experience. I must admit to feeling a bit freaked at first especially when we went up a steep boggy track. I was sure the elephant was going to fall sideways with me landing between the ground and the elephant! Once we got on level ground it was all good, though and was a very relaxing ride along the river bank.
Next was white-water rafting, or should I say brown water rafting. We decided Charlotte was too young and Karen happily volunteered to look after her and get a ride down in the van. The rapids were fun but not too scary, perfect for me but of course not quite scary enough for the rest of the family. We all really enjoyed it though. It was interesting for Tim to see how they run a rafting trip compared to how he would run one in NZ. They didn’t have a safety talk at all. If I didn’t have Tim with us I don”t know that I would have been happy jumping on a raft. At the end of the white-water section we were then transferred onto the bamboo rafts, which Karen and Charlotte joined us for. It was very cruisy, just floating , slightly submerged down the river for a while to our get out point.
After getting changed and eating iceblocks we jumped into the ute and headed back to Chiang-Mai.
We had one more day in CM before we packed up our bags and then all of us took the bus to Chiang-Rai, which took about 3 hours. There we did a bit more market shopping at the Night Bazaar, went on a boat ride to a cave, checked out an impressive temple, had lots of delicious fried chicken and fruit shakes and just hung out at our guesthouse. One day we paid for the kids to swim in a hotel pool, a bit of relief from the unbelievably sticky heat.
Monday came and this is when we left Karen, Willem and Hayley to head for the Laos border. They were heading back to CM for a few days, before heading to Bangkok. We had to catch a public bus to Chiang Saen so we could check out the Golden Triangle before getting to Chiang Khong where we’d spend the night. We had a good look around the Opium Musuem at the Golden Triangle which showed the long history of opium smoking and trading. When we got to Chiang-Khong we found a guesthouse right on the edge of the Mekong, with air-con for $30 for 2 triple rooms. In the morning we made our way to the wharf to begin our journey into Laos.