MEKONG BOAT DAY TWO

We were put on a far smaller boat with even more passengers.

It was leaning very heavily to one side for a few hours. When the water got very choppy in one part of the trip the men at the front looked concerned and moved lots of bags and rucksacks to the other side and it balanced out. But if that was not enough we stopped along the way and got another load of passengers.
We also pulled alongside the riverbank to drop people off to go to their villages in the middle of nowhere. It all added to the fascination of the journey.
The children and locals also took the opportunity to try and sell things from the rocks to passengers on the boat.



Again it was pretty dangerous, the way they leant into the boat from the rocks. But they seemed oblivious of the dangers and they were so smiley.
There was a real mixture of tourists on the boat which just added to the atmosphere. Young and old from all over the world just mixed and chatted and it was lovely to see how everyone was so good natured.
This leg of the trip took eight hours, and again the views from the boat were breathtakingly beautiful. I am so glad that I decided to do this trip! I have never seen such an impressive sunset as the one I witnessed over the Mekong as we made our way along the river to Luang Prabang.

Although you are sitting around on the boat for eight hours ,it is very wearing being in such cramped conditions for so long and I was glad when we eventually arrived at Luang Prabang eight ours later, just after the sunset..

MEKONG BOAT DAY ONE

The boat made its way along the Mekong river for seven hours. The views along the way were truely incredible. Some parts of the river were very choppy and my heart was in my mouth at times. There was a bar on board the boat so we got a few beers and read our books and the time passed. We arrived at Pack Bang around five thirty in the evening

and sure enough the locals were waiting by the riverside. Again there was lots of frenzied activity as they tried to secure a thin wooden plank for us to file off the boat. I do not know why they have to use such thin ones!!!


everytime I have to get off I just start to wobble and worry that I will fall in. Some people do fall in, but thank goodness I have managed, by the skin of my teeth to stay upright.

And I was really glad that we had the pep talk about the bags. They really do just jump onto the boat and start grabbing bags. Thankfully Don, the Canadian guy, spotted mine and shouted for me to grab it. There was also a very scary local man weilding a hacksaw at the teenagers as they tried to grab bags and shouting at them. So that was a bit of a deterrent. But they returned to chance their luck again.

It was quite scary just getting to the truck to be taken to our guesthouse. We had paid a fella at the border for a guesthouse when we got here. But in the chaos none of us took the name. We assumed we would be met. So we just followed a guy and hoped for the best. Thankfully he showed us to our rooms. We were given tourches because the electricity goes off around nine.There was no hot water. But we did get given large flasks with hot water so that we could have a washdown.

It is a very underdeveloped place, with the locals living very primitavely alongside the guesthouses that are springing up. After we settled into our rooms we headed to a local indian restaurant and had a good meal before going to bed.
Very early the next morning we were woken by a cockerill!!!!

The guesthouse owner says that local people use the early morning call of the Cockerill like a clock. They know that it is around half past five. So they get up, prepare the rice, then go to work. We on the otherhand could have wrung its kneck!!!
After breakfast we headed off to the boat for another lazy day sailing down the Mekong river.

SLOW MEKONG BOAT

I left Chang Mai in Northern Thailand and headed for Loas. First I had to take an eight hour bus journey to Huay Xai on the border of Thailand and Loas. It was very cramped but at least it was a fairly new bus. I got chatting to a few people including a lovely couple from Perth called Penny and Tony, so the journey passed quickly.


We were booked into a guesthouse overlooking the Mekong river. I was blown away by the view and it was nothing compared to the scenery I was going to experience along the slow boat journey over the next two days. They took our passports and said that they would sort the visas. No one really understood what was going on but we all just handed over the forms and passports.
Then we were given a meal and room for the night. Next day after breakfast we were given our packed lunches (spring rolls) then taken on buses to the riverside. Where we waited for ages to get our passports handed back with a Thai stamp. We then went onto longboats to be taken across the river.


Where we again had to fill in lots of forms and wait for ages to get our passports stamped by the Laos authorities and hand over thirty five dollars for the visa. They took small groups of us by taxi trucks to another cafe to hang around for another hour until everyone had been sorted. It was organised chaos.But it seemed to work. You just have to have faith that they do this everyday with lots of tourists and it works. I stocked up on plenty of water and of course a cushion! I had been told that you sit on hard wooden benches for eight hours.
It was a mad scramble to get a place on the boat and we were really packed in like sardines.But everyone was good natured so it was ok.
I sat near Penny and Tony from Perth and Dom and Norma from Canada sat further back.

I was lucky enough to get a bench to myself so I could sit lengthways which was a bonus!


Just before we set off we were given a pep talk by a local guy telling us when we get to the night stop the locals just make a grab for our rucksacks and bags and some go missing so we must take care!!! We thought it was funny.
Along the way we stopped at the rivers edge and lots of little children jumped onto the boat to sell us food and water. They seemed oblivious to the dangers of clambering down over the rocks. And they were very good persisstant sales people when they got on the boat.