2 Days on the Mighty Mekong

Monday January 21, Tuesday January 22 and Wednesday January 23

Heather wrote a fabulous update on the adventures of the last 24 hours we spent in Chiang Rai, and while we got a slightly later start on our way to Laos, we were still on a bus by 1pm. We had a 2 and half hour bus to the border between Thailand and Laos, then had to go through Thai Departures, take a ferry boat across to Huay Xi and then go through Laos Immigration.

Compared to other border crossings that we’ve been through (by plane and by bus), the feared Laotian immigration officials/process was relatively painless. We’d heard that it could be a nightmarish process, but the worst part was having to find a copy machine to copy our passports in lieu of a passport sized photo, and there was a significant lack of armed guards (in fact, we saw not one gun).

And to make us feel better about the robbery resulting in our belated start, as we were heading out of immigration to look into taking a boat to Luang Prabang, two couples approached us and asked if we would be interested in chartering a boat with 25 other people, for about the same price as the local boat. It was as if fate had intervened. However, fate could have done so in a way that was less stressful slash scary, btw.

Here’s the thing – there’s a public boat every day that starts the two-day, one-night trip to Luang Prabang around 11:30. During high season it always sells out the morning it leaves, and will have up to 80 people. Therefore, we were psyched that we’d been invited to charter a private boat…the same size boat, same exact trip, just with more room per person. However, we didn’t have a boat yet.

We found a guesthouse and dropped our stuff, and met up with the other 21 other boat people at a bar near the boat launch. Enter Mr. Funny and Olay, our boat owner and ‘tour guide’, respectively. And yes, Mr. Funny introduced himself that way, and Olay followed his introduction up with “Olay, like Ole, Ole, like the brazilian soccer fans”. Brian, an aussie slash the ringleader of the random hodgepodge group of chartered boaters, made sure there was actually a boat and confirmed it was ‘pimped out’ before we all put a deposit down. It ended up being a bit more expensive than the local boat, but well worth it in the end.

Tuesday morning we woke up, Heather, Sarah and I saw a Wat, and we were picked up by Mr. Funny’s private tuktuk service at noon. We arrived to find exactly what Brian had promised us; a pimped out boat. The seats were all from old buses or trains, leather for the most part, there was a DVD player which obviously had Thai Karaoke blasting within 10 minutes of launch, a stereo we hooked up to an ipod by cutting a few wires at a later point in the trip, a bar chock full of BeerLao (the only beer sold in Laos, ps), golden curtains throughout AND a sunroof. Absolutely ridiculous.

Please, also, let me introduce some of the cast of characters we found ourselves amongst for two days down the Mighty Mekong River…there was an American couple on their year-long honeymoon, a couple traveling together playing gigs, guitar + shakers, throughout the region when possible (Fantuzzi and Shoshona…ps when asked how long he had been traveling, Fantuzzi replied, “40 years”…I only hope I can say the same some day), an Aussie couple traveling after living in London for 5 years (also the brains and organizers behind the operation), an Aussie journalist living in Bangkok currently, Sandros – a young German entrepreneur who lists counting cards as one of his greatest talents, and memorable others. It was, literally, a cast of characters and we were happy to up the numbers of Americans on the boat, as we haven’t really met many along the way.

The first day was a 5 and a half hour trip to the stopping point for the night where we found a nice little guesthouse with restaurant attached. The cook thoroughly enjoyed all our questions, and tried to sell Flynn a canteen after one question of interest. We also met a little girl, related to the owners of the guesthouse, who apparently looks like an exact Laotian version of Flynn’s youngest sister, sass included. We were also offered marijuana on a number of occasions. Aforementioned restaurant, however, caused us to be late Wednesday morning getting to the boat and Heather and Flynn politely took a bow when they were given a round of applause for arriving late.

The second day, oh the Mighty Mekong was good to us. We had a 9-hour trip to Luang Prabang, and luckily people didn’t start drinking until noon. About an hour from LP, we stopped at a Buddha Cave, in which hundreds of buddhas have been placed over the years (this was great for the 4 of us because we had really wanted to see the cave, but didn’t want to have to spend half a day chartering a private boat to take us). The views we got from traveling along the Mekong River from Huay Xi to Luang Prabang were incredible, and there were constant rock formations that popped up along the river line. It was really interesting to see how much higher the water would be if we were traveling during the rainy season…slash we may or may not have wanted to travel along it during the rainy season.

We arrived in Luang Prabang about 10 minutes ahead of the public boat we chose not to get on, which was SUCH a blessing because it was like a backpacker frenzy to find cheap rooms throughout the town. We asked at one guesthouse, who were full, and luckily a random guy overheard us asking for a double room for 4 people. He introduced himself as Sai, and let us know “ahh, yes, I have a room for four. Hot showers too. Plus, I have free tea and bananas” We were sold.

The minute we began walking through the town, and you immediately see the French influence on the city. There are baguettes at every vendor, Lao coffee is on every menu and half the signs are translated into French as well as English. I immediately said that I could see myself living in Luang Prabang, it has a great small-town feel and the architecture is cute and quaint. However, it quickly became clear to us that the lasting French influence on the town was probably from the large population of rich French people that seem to vacation in LP, or even own small houses/apartments and spend their holidays in Laos.