Our travels in Laos were topped and tailed by adven­tures on the mighty Mekong River.  They began with a two day slow-boat trip from the Thai boarder town of Chi­ang Kong down­stream to Luang Pra­bang and ended, almost a month later, with us relax­ing amongst the 4,000 islands. An impress­ive jour­ney in its own right, though it was our new trav­el­ling friends that made it into the great adventure.

“Life is a musical thing and you’re sup­posed to sing or dance along the way.” Alan Watts

Our thanks go out to; Bob­bits (Lauren), Lenin (Tony) and ‘Team Gall­way’; Colin “The Best Fun I’ve Ever Had Ever And I’m Not Jok­ing” McGrath, Mariluz (Mari-looser) and Mari­ona (Mari-winner) for all the fun and craziness.

Journey’s begin­ning

Stay­ing at a lovely river­side gues­t­house in Chi­ang Khong we gazed over the Mekong River from Thai­l­and into Laos. The mys­ter­i­ous and magical land­scape of undu­lat­ing hills lit by moon­light sparked our ima­gin­a­tions about what won­ders we might find bey­ond this watery boundary.

It is not hard to visu­al­ise the beauty to behold in Malay­sia, Thai­l­and, Cam­bodia or Viet­nam since end­less tal­en­ted pho­to­graph­ers have splashed rich imagery of paddy fields, palm trees and col­our­ful tex­tiles across count­less books and magazine spreads. Laos, how­ever, was not so vividly known to us through image or art­icle and so retained an mys­tery about its land­scape, people and cul­ture. Hav­ing spent only a few weeks over-landing through Singa­pore, Malay­sia and North­ern Thai­l­and it was dif­fi­cult to anti­cip­ate how Laos would dif­fer from our ini­tially brief SEA exper­i­ence. Though genu­inely a little wary of step­ping into this unknown ter­rit­ory and with only a sketchy plan for a two day trip down the Mekong River we threw cau­tion to the wind and ven­tured forth into Laos.

The entire gues­t­house rose early, happy and excited. Gif­ted with lunch packs, water bottles and cush­ions for the wooden seats of the slow boat we all loaded into the back of a pickup with lug­gage pilled high between us. At this moment fate played a hand and this truck load of people became our travel com­pan­ions for the entirety of our Laos exper­i­ence and we soon became ‘friends bey­ond borders’.

Cross­ing into Laos – visa on arrival

With little fuss this amaz­ingly simple task was executed at the small visa-on-arrival and pass­port office by at the river­side. All that was required were a pass­port and mug shot each and the reques­ted amount of local cur­rency. With pro­tocol com­pleted we trans­ferred quickly by tuk-tuk to the boat depar­ture point a little down­stream. Great swathes of tour­ists amassed and were sum­mar­ily gouged for refresh­ments by local news­agents. How­ever the café atmo­sphere was bathed in early morn­ing sun which did much to relax every­one and pre­cip­it­ate chatting.

All pass­ports had to be veri­fied by the police here so unnerv­ingly we all handed our pass­ports over to our guide, not some­thing that ever comes eas­ily to someone on for­eign soil. The only com­fort was the num­ber of tour­ists ‘in the same boat’ so to speak! We waited anxiously for their safe return as the guides cas­u­ally wandered around grasp­ing stacks of passports.

Pass­port col­lec­tion beside the Mekong River!

In due course we her­ded down the ruck­sack strewn boat ramp and joined the throngs of tour­ists queuing to board. I have learnt that wait­ing and queuing are part and par­cel of trav­el­ling and there­fore should be calmly accep­ted, within reason. I quickly learnt that you can never pre­dict what your actual jour­ney will entail only that you will get to your des­tin­a­tion even­tu­ally, hope­fully in the near future, and gen­er­ally all the richer for the exper­i­ence. Time duly passed and with no pro­gress being made I had a feel­ing we were now prob­ably ‘on Laos time’. Slightly bemused by the delay, but patiently Eng­lish about queuing we all waited. Old habits die hard!

Slowly tongues star­ted wag­ging and it became clear that this was in fact a protest! Tour­ist were vot­ing with their feet to force a second slow-boat to be provided rather than cram­ming us all onto one. As was had tick­ets for the cur­rently empty boat we made a run for it, the best you can with a 23kg back­pack and the rest! It was worth the energy expendit­ure as we secured ourselves the few pad­ded car seats at the back so no sore bums or cush­ions required for us!

Along the Mekong River – Day 1

The impress­ively long Mekong River flows from the moun­tains of China through Thai­l­and before enter­ing North­ern Laos where it fol­lows closely to the West­ern boarder all the way to the 4,000 islands in the South before flow­ing into Cam­bodia and through the Mekong Delta in South­ern Viet­nam, exit­ing into the South China Sea.

Life on the river

Crammed with tour­ists and a sprink­ling of friendly loc­als the slow boat became a lively place. We had such fun shar­ing food with the Lao­tians and ges­tic­u­lat­ing to over­come the large lan­guage bar­rier. At the back of the boat the motor was par­tic­u­larly loud and smelly even though a moun­tain of lug­gage muffled some of the machinery. The noise did not pre­vent the ebb and flow of chat­ter though or the inev­it­able drift of pas­sen­gers in and out of con­scious­ness as the count­less hills slowly blen­ded together and silently slipped by.

Trav­el­ling on the river provides an idyllic win­dow into the beau­ti­fully untouched land­scape and tri­bal cul­ture of rural Laos. Chil­dren play on small but per­fectly formed stretches of white sand dot­ted along the river bank. Fish­ing rods glisten as they dip into the fast waters is search of a bite from a hungry Mekong Fish. Com­munit­ies of simple huts perch on hill­sides sur­roun­ded by breath­tak­ing views and boun­ti­ful indi­gen­ous forest. People may look on their lives as poor by west­ern stand­ards, but I think wealth is rel­at­ive. These people to me are richer in life than all those who chase only fin­an­cial wealth as a route to happiness.

Overnight in Pak Beng

Though the days travel had brought with it new found friends and a glimpse into the treas­ures of Laos, as the sun set I felt more than ready to dis­em­bark for the night. Blessed with a con­stant flow of tour­ists onto its banks every even­ing Pak Beng has seem­ingly won the lot­tery from a prosper­ity point of view. Never-the-less this small town lacks any pan­ache that would nor­mally be asso­ci­ated with such a place and instead of becom­ing a tour­ist haven it has become a conman’s one. Scams are rife and illegal drugs too.

Chan­ging light at Pak Beng

Secure in the know­ledge of the poten­tial pit­falls ‘our mob’ quickly nego­ti­ated accom­mod­a­tion up the hill. Fun­nily enough, but not at all sur­pris­ingly, on our arrival at the gues­t­house the price had sud­denly increased! We quickly quashed this firmly by stick­ing to our agreed price. Even­tu­ally they kept to their word. That night we cel­eb­rated Mariluz’s birth­day with din­ner over­look­ing the river. To my great amuse­ment ‘happy meals’ were on the menu which were sum­mar­ily declined by the entire party. Know­ing the sever pen­al­ties for drug tak­ing in these parts you would be a fool to indulge. Des­pite our hosts sus­pi­cious nature and fre­quent room inspec­tions ‘Bob Mar­ley’ did not make any appear­ance that night. We gave our time over to hav­ing a great laugh with plenty of drink­ing, smoking, card play­ing (and nud­ity in parts)!

Along the Mekong River – Day 2

Des­pite the antics we rose early to secure good seats again as the Lonely Planet advised. Drag­ging ourselves into the ver­tical pos­i­tion, des­pite the inev­it­able hangovers, was not fun. Though fur­ther tor­ture was to come when we were sub­jec­ted to watch­ing and wait­ing for the slow­est sandwich-maker in his­tory make our lunch. A dose of strong Laos cof­fee was admin­istered and we finally left this grotty place and headed down to the boat for 7am. Our effort was again rewar­ded as we secured the only com­fort­able seats onboard. Happy days. Now we slipped into our seats and slowly woke up whilst on the river itself (though for some the bob­bing up and down was not ideal!). As oth­ers scrambled to get a wooden seat and stow their cum­ber­some ruck­sacks, I was happy to pho­to­graph­ic­ally exploit the ‘golden hours’. We depar­ted around 8am.

The scenery star­ted out much the same on day two so altern­at­ive enter­tain­ment was gleaned from books, iPods, cam­eras, play­ing cards and chit chat as oth­ers plugged in their earplugs to drown out the increased back­ground noise. Peri­od­ic­ally we could hear the determ­ined nego­ti­ations of dis­gruntled pas­sen­gers who’d been short-changed by the greedy onboard shop assist­ant. As the day slipped by and hangovers sub­sided our smiles reappeared. Dusk arrived and so did we in Luang Prabang.

James fol­lows the back­packer trail into Luang Prabang

Over­all our group all enjoyed the Mekong trip and I would recom­mend it. I believe there are more lux­uri­ous places to stay on the Mekong, but obvi­ously this is rel­at­ive to your budget and not ours! My sug­ges­tions for max­im­ising enjoy­ment is arriv­ing early to secure a good seat (pho­to­graph­ic­ally and shel­ter from the sun), bring­ing food and water pro­vi­sions onboard, a cush­ion and lots of enter­tain­ment and per­haps a hangover cure or sea-sickness pills for day 2!

*See the next post for our time in Luang Pra­bang and jour­ney south through Laos.*

Journey’s end – The 4,000 Islands

As our month in Laos came to a close we hap­pily came back to the Mekong River for another dose of fun and relax­a­tion to round off the trip. Fes­tooned through­out the south­ern mean­der­ings of the Mekong River are many beau­ti­ful and largely untouched islands of vary­ing sizes; some large enough to sup­port vil­lages, temples and tour­ists too.

Tak­ing up our friends’ recom­mend­a­tion we first stopped off for some quiet time before rejoin­ing the group on another island. Though we were hav­ing a blast trav­el­ling en mass, it was good to have some ‘Mummy and Daddy time’ too! The minivan from Pakse dropped us at the river­side where a local boat­man took us over to our gues­t­house on the island shore oppos­ite. He gave such a good sales pitch for his river boat tours using good Eng­lish and a non pushy tone that we booked his ser­vices for our trip down­stream in a couple of days.

Don Khong is a rel­at­ively large island though eas­ily explor­able by bike. With a won­der­fully peace­ful vibe it is easy to tap into the relaxed pace of island life. Life here is simple with farm­ing as the source of sus­tain­ab­il­ity. Vil­lages formed of raised wooden houses dot the land­scape, though these vil­la­gers are sur­pris­ingly well con­nec­ted with the out­side world through satel­lite and the internet!

Free to roam the island or cyberspace

We enjoyed the simple life here. Cyc­ling about amongst the rice pad­dies watch­ing water-buffalo wad­ing and graz­ing in the heat of the day, explor­ing local vil­lages and din­ing at the waters edge. Romantic.

Life in the river

Trav­el­ling down river here was a spe­cial exper­i­ence. Much less touristy than the north­ern Mekong and with many more vil­lages draped down to the waters edge you get to see a rich tapestry of life on the river. Fish­ing boats and nets fes­toon the riverb­ank, small allot­ments grow well next to the water­side, clothes and people wash in the river and water buf­falo roam free. Tra­di­tional boats nav­ig­ate up and down­stream trans­port­ing vil­la­gers too and fro and some­times Monks who cover their faces from the unre­pent­ant spray.

Our des­tin­a­tion was the sun­rise side of Don Dhet. This is the place to swing lazily in a ham­mock on a private bal­cony of your own bam­boo bun­ga­low over­look­ing the Mekong, or so we thought. My descrip­tion is in essence true only the huts were more basic than any­one could ima­gine. There was fin­esse about this wooden bed box with no door handle and a trunk style latch with small pad­lock for secur­ity. The string ham­mock was very uncom­fort­able for any­thing over a few minutes and the facil­it­ies were a dark cold shower and squat toi­let in a tin and breezeblock con­struc­tion across the path beside the own­ers home. Still for two quid a night who’s com­plain­ing and our friends were here!

Sun­rise over our bun­ga­low and cock­tails at sunset

For a while we had fun stay­ing within the vil­lage set­ting, one night splash­ing out and enjoy­ing a simply deli­cious Bel­gium meal at the Sun­set Res­taur­ant, though after a few days this cor­ridor­esque liv­ing arrange­ment became very claus­tro­phobic and we moved on.

Don Khone was to be our last des­tin­a­tion in Laos and it was much more our scene and my favour­ite island. Here the accom­mod­a­tion was more integ­rated into vil­lage life, rather than tak­ing over from it. Loc­als played bad­min­ton at our gues­t­house in the after­noons, school chil­dren road bikes to and from school, monks col­lec­ted alms and cats, dogs, chick­ens and water-buffalo all roamed freely. Tour­ists here do not out-number loc­als. Perfect.

We hired bikes again and rode to the local beach to catch some rays. The bikes were really decrepit and though I star­ted with one brake I soon had none! Lenin’s chain kept com­ing off and Bob­bits bike was just as crazy as she. Still we man­aged to cycle there and back along the sand path­ways, via an impress­ive water­fall, with no major trau­mas and above all had fun. I wouldn’t recom­mend tak­ing the trip to see the lar­ger water­fall from here though, although impress­ive the trip to the main­land is long and it was a major tour­ist trap which made it rather unpleas­ant to hang around.

From here we made the long trip across to Siem Reap in Cam­bodia, via Phnom Penh. While only $19 by bus it is a jour­ney not for the travel weary, but a neces­sary evil to spend our last days with our bud­dies and cel­eb­rate Christ­mas at Angkor Wat! We lit­er­ally danced across the bor­der hand in hand and gave Laos one last long­ing look and our jour­ney here was com­plete. We still miss Laos and would go back in a heartbeat!

Cesca

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