Summary
I traveled from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang by boat, stopping overnight in Pak Beng. I then took the Laos-China Railway to Vientiane, enjoying the scenery and attractions. After a brief stay, I took a sleeper train to Bangkok, concluding my trip.
I found boat # 9 and was pleased I had a front row seat for the journey on this boat starting about 9:30 AM.
The first time I took this two-day boat ride was in 2005; it cost $8.50 and now cost $24, back then, 90% of the passengers were locals, and now 90% are tourists. The boats remain the same, and with the river so low, the pilot was very cautious going through the shallow areas and rapids.
On some of these stops vendors, would get on and sell fresh fruit and other snacks. I end up buying some watermelon.
We stopped overnight in Pak Beng, and I stayed at the Pak Beng Guesthouse that I had earlier booked, which was in the center of the village.
I had dinner with the view of the river below and was joined by a Dutch couple who were motorbiking along the Mekong River, who shared their adventures or misadventures of getting lost and staying with a family overnight, and his wife crashing her motorbike and getting a bit of road rash. I shared with them the differences between my first travel the same route in 2005 compared to now.
I saw this monk procession while eating breakfast before catching the boat to Luang Prabang
In the morning, I got in a different boat to continue our journey down river and I got the same spot right behind the pilot.
One fellow next to me was from Argentina, so I talked about my trip to Argentina during the 2022 World Cup celebrations, where I saw three of the exciting games that Argentina had won before their final victory.
It turns out he was the CEO of an AI company headquartered in Colorado with clients throughout the world. Most of the employees were located in Latin American countries like Peru, Colombia, and Argentina. He said they were a lot cheaper to employ than those he employed in Colorado. He said their client base was medium to small companies that were using AI to be able to reduce their workforce sizes. Their work was entirely in English, though. He said that with the Internet, he could work anywhere in the world, and he liked to travel.
This was a faster, but more dangerous way to travel the Mekong River.
Another traveler was Ocan who was a gold miner— like many we saw along the Mekong River— and was taking some of his findings down to the assay office. He showed me a couple chunks of stones that he was taking that he said had gold in them. Some of it was sparkly, but I couldn’t tell.
All along the Mekong, we would see several people mining for gold in the cracks and crevices of the rocks.
As we neared Luang Prabang, we passed under the newly completed Laos- China Railway, which has resulted in a boom of Chinese tourism and investments in Laos.
We then passed by the Pak Ou caves, where tourists stop to see the 1,000 Buddha statues. This was also a refuge for locals during the Vietnam War bombings in the area. About 2 million tons of ordnance were dropped on Laos between 1964 and 1973. This was a planeload every eight minutes, 24 hours per day, for nine years. This totals 270 million cluster bombs, with 80 million of them that did not detonate and are still buried in farmland. It is the most heavily bombed country per capita in the history of mankind.
They estimate that over 20,000 people have been killed or injured by unexploded ordnance in Laos since the war ended and 40% are children. Even today, over 50 casualties are reported per year---source: Legacies of War.
After docking in Luang Prabang, we caught a half-hour tuk-tuk ride to the center of downtown Luang Prabang for 100,000 Kip—$5 USD.
The hotel I had booked for seven nights at a cost of $18 per night was full, so they took me to the nearby Jasmine Place Hotel, which was brand new and much nicer.
During my weekday, I visited many of the local attractions, as well as took a trip out to the waterfalls.
This is Wat Ho Prabang with its multi headed Nagas guarding the entrance.
This is the Wat Xiang Thong with some monks who love to have their pictures taken with tourists.
Here are various street scenes that include a soccer game, a place where President Obama had a coconut drink, and a beautiful sunset with dinner, followed by a walk through the food stalls and night market.
I got up early one morning to watch the monks pass through town, collecting offerings and giving out blessings to villagers and tourists. These processions, called Tak Bat, are centuries old.
The Tak Bat processions have now become a real business with locals setting up several chairs, offering baskets, all for a charge.
This contrasted a lot with my first experience in 2002 and 2005. In those years, there were no rows of chairs, but just mats with locals and a few tourists like me offering a handful of rice to the monks along with some goodies.
I now wondered if the monks collected all this and then sold the excess collection back to the local entrepreneurs who set out the chairs and the offering baskets that they had sold to the tourists.
There were still locals who received blessings and gave out small offerings of rice. And there were still some poor kids who received some of the offerings the monks had collected and returned to the poor kids.
I spent one afternoon taking a minivan for $6.40 out to the Tat Kuang Si waterfalls, where I enjoyed 5 hours of hiking, swimming, and taking pictures of the beautiful falls.
I climbed many stairs and switchbacks up to the temple at the top of Mount Phu Si. I enjoyed the simple temple as well as the amazing views of Luang Prabang and the Mekong River flowing by.
On the way up, this vendor was selling opportunities to free birds, so I had her free two for me for 50,000 kip.
One evening, I attended the Royal Ballet Theatre performance on the grounds of the museum. The highlight was the monkey dance.
Most of the dancing was slow and deliberate, and I was told that both Lao and Cambodian dances were deliberately slow so that when viewed by the ruler, he would not be threatened by assassination attempts, or if so, they could be thwarted by fast-acting palace guards. That tradition carried on.
Instead of taking a nine-hour bus ride to Vientiane as I had done in previous visits, I took the new high-speed rail, Laos-China Railway, for just two hours and $30 USD for a first-class seat since all other seats had been sold out.
With the completion of this railway on December 3 2021, the number of Chinese visitors has multiplied exponentially. The next largest group of nationalities to visit is the French, most likely because it used to be a French colony.
When I booked the train ticket, I also bought a minivan ride for 50,000 Kip—$2.40 USD to the Laos-China Railway station, some 10 km away from downtown Luang Prabang.
The train ride was very comfortable. It reminded me of many of the trains I rode while visiting Spain in 2024.
I visited several temples, including Wat Saket, as well as enjoying the cheapest massages in Southeast Asia at under $10, including tip.
To visit the Pha That Luang temple, I took two sangthaew rides that cost about $10 USD. They claim that there is a breastbone from the Buddha buried here.
Along the way, I passed by their replica of the Arc de Triomphe. This was built with cement from the US government that was intended for an airport runway during the Vietnam War.
I enjoyed some great French meals at the nearby Vendône Restaurant of fish, pork, and beef.
After dinners, I went to the walking street area where there were lots of other restaurants and vendors selling all kinds of stuff, and got my cheap massages for under $10, including tip.
When I left Vientiane, I walked to the Central Bus Station and caught the noon bus to the Laos-China Railway Station, where I thought I was going to catch my sleeper train to Bangkok. When I went through the security checkpoint, the woman told me I was at the wrong train station. What a surprise.
My three bunk mates on the sleeper train included 2 monks and a Thai woman. The monk said their home was the temple in Bangkok. One of the monks had been a monk for 25 years, and the other for five years. The older monk had a big bag of Laos goodies that he was taking down to share with his monk buddies in Bangkok.
Nowadays, I always get a bottom bunk, or I don’t take the train since I get up a few times a night.
Shortly after crossing the Laos-Thai border, we exited the train for an hour so we could go through Thai immigration. I just had to show my passport along with the online visa good for another 60 days in Thailand.
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