A plane to Chiang Mai, Thailand takes only a few hours and costs $150, twice the price of the 3 day boat/bus trip. Speedboats are much faster but deaths are not unheard of. But we have the time and want to see some of the country so we booked the slow boat for Monday.
A picture may be worth a thousand words but when the picture and the boat aren’t the same some of the words might be profane. We have come to expect a 7:30 pick-up would arrive at 8:00 for an 8:15 departure that leaves at 8:45 so Monday morning wasn’t a surprise. Our names were on our guaranteed ‘soft seats’ on the boat but it turned out to be a bench seat removed from a mini-van. In addition to us tourists there were 25 or so Laotians headed upstream with tons of cargo which included a tire and a toilet.
Slow boats are about 60 feet long and only 8 feet wide. The diesel engine was loud enough to drown out normal conversation but the Laotian gentlemen behind us overpowered it by shouting. Thank god for earplugs and advil. Once underway everyone moved around to get comfortable but we stayed in our assigned seats. We paid extra for them!
The next nine hours crept by. Even heading upstream against the mighty Mekong we moved fast enough to create a chilly breeze. The scenery didn’t change much. Thick vegetation clung to steep hillsides right down to the water’s edge. Sometimes there were rocky shoals and sandbars. At other places the river narrowed and flowed turbulently between rocks, not quite rapids but close, with some whirlpools. There were few signs of habitation; a couple of canoes here, a hut or two there. We stopped at a little riverside hamlet where several locals got off along with the tire and the toilet.
We spent the night at Pak Beng, a town of restaurants and guesthouses that owes its existence to river travelers from Luang Prabang to Houysay. The Pak Beng Guesthouse like everyplace else in town has only cold showers and the electricity goes off at 10:30. We had dinner at our hotel then stopped for desert at the bakery of a Laotian we met on the boat. We can recommend the chocolate croissants. Yummy!
Our boat today was much nicer; 24 mini-van seats and a real toilet. It left 45 minutes late which meant we would arrive at Houysay after dark. The trip, the river and the scenery were much the same as yesterday. We made some more stops for passengers and cargo including several baskets of chickens. Judging by the numbers of late afternoon bathers, Tuesday must be bath day along the Mekong.
It is a shame our last memory of Laos will be Housay. It is just the opposite from Pak Beng. The hotels are 1 ½ km from the boat dock, there are no tuk-tuks and no one offers any help. Heck, no one even speaks English which is hard to believe in a bustling border town. The Friendship Guesthouse was just one level below basic but it did have hot water. Chiang Khong, Thailand is just across the river. How we get across is another matter, one we will deal with in the morning.
