thewills'wanderings

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……..

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 7:42 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.