Friday evening I posted a quick hello from Chiang Khong... and then the adventure started. I said it was alright for one night... that's before we really tried out the room. I mean, it was fine, BUT. When I went to the bathroom, I noticed our sink wasn't even connected to the drainage pipe below... so half of the water made it in, and the other went on the floor, which isn't really a problem when you shower on the same floor, but still. The beds were rock hard, and the pillows--- i didn't even know they make pillows like that!! rock hard rubber. yes. some sort of plastic/rubber material that was in no way pillow material. horrible. BUT it was a bed, and door locked and it was fine.
Currently, the exchange rate for kip to the dollar is about 8600kip = $1. We were going to exchange some money (US to kip) in Chiang Khong, but when I worked up the exchange rate, the woman was going to give us 7500k per dollar. we decided to not exchange.
in the morning, we all left the guesthouse at 8am to be taken to customs at the river. Leaving Thailand was no problem and we took our luggage down to the river to be ferried across on a long boat to Huoay Xai, Laos. Once there we had to get a passport photo and fill out papers to get a 30day visa. Mine was $35 & Julia's $30 (different countries) and everyone had to pay and extra $1 to cover the people for working on a Saturday. If you didn't have American Dollars, you had to get it exchanged right there -- clearly for a not so good rate from the Baht. Luckily we had American Dollars to pay with. From there we had to wait for everyone to get through Laos customs which gave me time to run to an ATM that someone had told me about to get out some kip. 300,000 kip -- I have never felt so rich in my life. haha :)
We were taken to where the boat launches from and were greeted by a VERY VERY cramped slow boat. It is lined with benches that are wooden and very upright, with no leg room. Fortunately, someone had told us to buy pillows to sit on, that they were a MUST. we followed the advice. Some people went to sleep on top of all the luggage and we found a little back deck to take some breaks on, which is really the family's kitchen at nights. about 10 minutes into the trip we thought our boat was going to break, and we pulled close to shore... apparently it was alright though. The journey took a 7 grueling hours, but luckily we met a lot of people and got good advice, having plenty of time to talk.
We stopped to spend the night in Pak Beng-- a TINY town with one main road that can be walked in 10 minutes, and completely seems to cater to tourists. The town power is run by individual generators at the seperate houses/guesthouses/restaurants,etc. These generators are only switched on from 6pm-10pm. Foregoing the 300baht for one night price of a guesthouse booked beforehand, despite being told that we would arrive after dark, a small group of us decided we would find our own accomodation upon arrival. we arrived well before dark and found a place for 100baht for one night-- 50b per person! :)
One of the people we met on the boat talked to the owner and convinced him to keep the power on a bit later if we had a "party" -- meaning we would all be buying beer there. First, we went to dinner and ate at this little place that at the bottom of the sign out front it said "my wife is a good cook" and we thought that was so cute we ate there. there were 11 of us (2 dutch, 2 english, 2 american, 2 irish, 2 canadian, 1 new zealander) and the sweet and sour dish julia & i split was amazing!! from there we went back to our guesthouse and sat around for about 4 hours listening to music (well, only until 11 when he turned off the power) and talking.
BUT... before that started... 2 of the irish girls found a nice surprise in their room... a GIANT HAIRY spider. so THANKFULLY this did not grace our room, if you know how arachiphobic I am... This spider was bigger than my palm, so probably the size of a grown man's palm. I did manage to take a picture.
Despite that, we slept pretty well, using the squishy comforter kind of like a taco to half sleep on it, half sleep in it. It got surprisingly cold at night so this was necessary. We slept well until 5am when the many roosters started their incessant crowing. We finally got up at 6am to shower and go find breakfast.
Breakfast was an adventure with the servers/guesthouse owners knowing only a few words of english. Mine turned out fine, but one of the Dutch boys' order, everything was wrong.
The day before, when we arrived, the children were hanging around trying to steal snacks from us -- they took a halfway empty bag of chips off one of the people we had met, out of his hands, as he was eating them.
Anyway, this morning when we went to get on our boat we found we were on a wider boat that somehow must havebeen longer as well since we had more room. THis time we rearranged the benches so it worked better for stretching legs and being a bit more comfortable 7 hour journey.
We arrived this evening in Luang Prabang, and walked around a bit to find a guesthouse, finding one we liked within 20 minutes. We went to figure out our next travel move by talking to travel agencies, finding that almost none of them spoke english, odd, since they're trying to sell to tourists! At about the 5th place we went, we found a Lao girl that spoke English very well and could answer all of our questions about traveling to Vang Vieng and then on to Vientiane, and then on to Vietnam. We wanted to hug her!
So now, in Luang Prabang, going to see the town tomorrow and hopefully go to a nice waterfall as well! :)
