Thus begins my next adventure to travel by slow boat from Huay Xai, Laos to Luang Prabang with an overnight stay in Pak Beng. Here are the boats lined up in Pak Beng.
I left Chiang Rai by local bus to Chiang Khong which was a two-hour bus ride for just 60 Baht. This was a well-worn bus, and the driver ensured us a safe journey by adding another floral offering over his rear view mirror.
When I got to Chiang Kong many of the Western tourists got off to take a tuk-tuk across the fairly new Friendship Bridge that was about 5 miles south of town. I rode the bus into town and after breakfast, I walked to the Thai Immigration office north of town. When I presented my Passport to join the other locals to cross here by long-tail boat, the official said that only locals could use this border crossing and I had to enter Laos via the Friendship bridge.
I caught a taxi ride for 200 Baht to the Immigration office at the bridge. After clearing Thai Immigration, we had to board a shuttle bus that took us to the other side of the Friendship bridge to go through Laos Immigration.
After filling out the Visa application including the passport photo, I paid $35 USD and got my Laos Visa.
To get to town the three of us bought a shuttle ticket for 42,000 Kip—$4.75 USD. Another fellow joined us for the trip and we still sat for about 1/2 hour. I went to the driver and asked him if we could go immediately if I gave him 20,000 kip—$2.25. He agreed and we were off to town and the bus station. All others got off at the bus station and I continued downtown to the BAP Guesthouse.
Leaving the Laos Immigration Station.
The owner gave me a room with a view of the Mekong River for 100,000 kip—$11 USD—for the night with breakfast included.
The owner, Full Moon, was quite a character as she told me while I was having dinner that she had taught Laotian to the CIA people that were here during the Vietnam War. The current airport was built for the Air America flights during the war.
Sunset at the locals-only border crossing looking toward Thailand.
The following morning while having breakfast I met some of the other slow boat passengers. Paul was a 77-year-old Dane who lived in Nong Kai, Thailand with his 5th wife—a younger Laotian woman. Joy and Yan were two young women from Chongqing, China. Joy worked in marketing for a clothing import-export company that had recently shut down because of the Coronavirus outbreak. They were not sure when they would be returning to China.
I enjoyed a mango smoothie while waiting for our boat to load up. Our boat looked in pretty poor shape with some of the “airplane” seats unanchored to the floor. The seat system did not hold and a few of the rows had no room for our feet. We all piled on the best we could.
The last time I had made this journey in the opposite direction it was not crowded like now and over half of the passengers were locals. This time about 90% were tourists.
When I found my way back to the bathroom, I learned that the bathroom floor was sloshing with water and the toilet was a squatter. After that, I saw that one of the boat crew was bailing out water from around the engine area. We were all rooting him on because this boat had no life preservers.
We stopped along the way to either pick up or leave passengers and their goods. Many times there were just trails leading up to the jungle instead of villages.
We also saw people that looked like they were panning for gold.
The Mekong ran through some rocky terrain and causes some minor rapids in our downstream path.
We arrived at Pak Beng where we would spend the night in one of the many guest houses. As we came up from the boats, we were offered accommodations. I was going to go with Paul in an open truck for a place costing 80,000 per night, but the tout kept trying to hustle more customers so I just started walking up to the town center. Two girls approached me with their sign for a place in town for the same price so I followed the one to the Douchaun Guesthouse where I was given a great upstairs room with a view of the Mekong and our riverboats.
As the sunset, I had dinner downstairs while watching the Mekong River roll on.
They had told us that we would be taking a different boat from Pak Beng to Luang Prabang and we were all pleased with the boat we got. It was clean, seats were comfortable and ample, there were life preservers and I got to sit in front beside the captain. Paul, the Dane, joined me for the remainder of the journey.
As we journeyed down the Mekong, the wife and son were adept at poling our way at the stops, and sometimes a passenger assisted.
You could see the power of the river as we went through some rocky areas. This was the narrowest place where the captain slowed down the engines and shot through this rock-walled passage.
In some cases, the captain did not go to shore to pick up passengers but rather paid the small boatmen to pick up passengers. It looked pretty exciting as it happened because of the power of the Mekong.
As we approached Luang Prabang we saw where the Chinese were building a bridge crossing the Mekong as well as the airport. Progress—I guess.
Along the way, we passed by the Ou Pak caves that I had visited in my earlier visits.
As we docked and walked up to the road, I found the tuk-tuk station that offered a 15,000 kip ride to town some 10 km away which I quickly boarded and took me to downtown Luang Prabang where they were just beginning to set up the huge night market.
I have recently uploaded all of my travel videos to YouTube now that they allow longer uploads and you may want to see my travel adventures there. That link is
https://www.youtube.com/c/huntforgold.
If you do go there, please subscribe to my video channel since it will help me eventually get some income there and help with my future travels. Fewer people are using DVDs so I am transitioning to streaming my travels on my YouTube channel.
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