Destination – Lao
–
Luang Prabang – South East Asia on Prozac (followed by a very long boat ride)
We arrive in
Luang Prabang at 2pm, the following day. We shower, eat and sleep till next
morning. The Villa Somphong guesthouse is great and the location, overlooking
the river, is really nice. The city is very pretty, with a great mix of French
& Indochinese architecture, set on the Mekong river. It is a feel good,
tourist friendly place but with a closer look, you can see that everything is
fairly new and planned for your enjoyment. No problems with that, let’s enjoy
it. We go for cheap meals at the lovely night
markets, we explore the nice restaurants and shops, we walk around the magic
lanes, visit the Buddha caves, the many wats, museums and we wake up early to
see the Alms ceremony, where the local residents offer food to the monks. Yes,
it’s definitely a pleasant place and you can check out great pics.
After
9 days in LP we start to make our way to Chiang Mai, Thailand. We decide to go
by boat, I guess, donkeys are unavailable this time of the year. It’s a long
boat and longer hours are involved, but yeah, we’ll make it. The boat has old
bus seats and we can move them around to make ourselves comfortable. We make
instant friends with a Brazilian girl, an Aussie and an English guy and two
Japanese girls, a nice bunch. On our first day on the Mekong, the 8 hours
became 9 ½ , the scenery is nice with mountains and loads of green forest. We
stop at Pak Beng, a very small town in northern Lao and are pleasantly
surprised by the reasonable guesthouses available. We crash and sleep like
babies (waking up crying every few hours :-)). We wake up early to keep going for
day 2. Day 2 is more of the same, same 8 hours becoming 9, the same might
Mekong river, the mountains, the green, yeah, you got it, we start to feel a
bit hypnotized by both the landscape and the atmosphere. We stop again to sleep
in the slightly better town of Huay Xai and idem guesthouse. We go out for dinner
and a few beers with our boat BFFs and sleep very well, thanks for asking. It’s time to keep going again, so, after
breakfast, we get through immigration in Lao, get another long boat to cross the
river, walk to the Thai immigration, get a new visa, a tuk-tuk to the minivan
and catch a 5 hour minivan (hello Thailand, welcome to minivan country) to
Chiang Mai, northern Thailand..