5th - 6th Feb - On the Mekong
On The Mekong is no euphemism for 'on the piss' if only. On the Mekong will forever mean awful terminal boredom for me. The day started well enough with free breakfast but soon descended into chaos. None of us had our passports and were being herded down to the river and passport control. The woman who took our passports was completely calm so I was likewise- ish.
Eventually we got the passport with Loas Visa and Thailand exit stamp on it - ok - it worked. We got a small boat to the other side of the river into Laos. More chaos. We went through passport control and got a bus to where the boats to go down the Mekong were. Our passports were taken off us again so a local policeman could see them. What - he wanted to laugh at our photos?
The boat I was assigned to by the policeman was crap. Low ceiling - so you had to bend, everybody hit their heads at least once and not enough leg room as the curve of the side of the small boat took it all. They squeezed us in not a free seat in site. I opened my book and tried to ignore the crap cramped conditions for the next 8 hours. Not easy. I didn't want to drink too much liquid cos I didn't want to brave the toilets.
I was so glad when we finally stopped for the night in Pakbeng a small town in Laos only to be even more pissed off with the living conditions. Pakbengs only function is as a tourists stop on the river and has lots of crap guest houses. It's a mad scramble at the river to get a place and I followed a few others to a pretty basic place but knew there wouldn't be much left in town now.
I had a private room with shared bathroom. One bathroom shared with the entire building of 20 rooms and it was horrid. I had dinner and went to bed glad for a nights sleep. Unfortunately it wasn't an undisturbed night’s sleep. I could hear the scratch of rats and at one point turned on my torch (which Mairi had lent me) only to see one of the horrid furry creatures running along the roof beams. It was rather hard to sleep after that, I had a mosquito net but no rat net and I hate rats.
I was glad to hear the chickens crowing and got up just to get out of the place.
Thankfully the boat I got on this morning was much better, higher ceiling so you didn't have to bend and leg room for all. There were even cushions on the seats. Luxury bloody luxury. In this luxury you can actually start to look at and think about your surroundings. I don't think I looked up from my book once, in my misery, yesterday. Today I saw children playing in the river, old men fishing on tiny boats and people working the fields. The hills in the back ground really impressive and the whole area shimmering in the sun.
The boat stopped to pick up some people and children ran to the boat looking for goodies. A few people came prepared and the children were delighted with plastic toys, crayons and sunglasses.
My lasting impression of the Mekong will be of one little boy trying on his new sun glasses - sweet.
Today’s boat journey was another 8 hours and eventually got tedious. At least everybody was alot happier and chatted along the way. The guy in front of me, from Liverpool, told me I was doing the best thing with my redundancy money, he told me he had been made redundant a few years ago and put all his money into paying his house off. He then split from his wife and she's got the house - ouch!.
Finally we arrived in our destination Luang Prabang. Again there was a mad scramble for guest houses - a guy in a familiar green and white stripped Celtic top offered me and one of the Swedish couples rooms - I could hardly say no - so got in his tuktuk to a small traditional wooden building in town. It was pretty nice and we all decided to stay.
Sanna, Jurgen and I went out for dinner and a few drinks. Luang Prabang is a nice town with a fantastic mix of French and Laos architecture and a million times better than the hovel I stayed in last night. I think I may like this.
