Blogging Pubbitch

The trip from Thailand to Luang Prabang, our first real stop in Laos, was a two stage journey, firstly by bus to Chiang Khong, where the guest house was run by a lovely ex-ladyboy who insisted on calling everyone "Chickadee", and slow boat for a two day journey, stopping at Pak Beng on the way.

The first part of the journey was uneventful, though we did get to chat to people and started to formulate our own plans for getting around SE Asia a little more. The slow boat journey started with a terrifically long wait, folled by a nice little scam for "insurance money" on the boat itself. Of the 20-30 people on the boat, only one other person other than Holly and I refused to pay for it. Talking to other people here, it would seem as though we're the norm, though.

The overnight stop was at a place called Pak Beng. This "charming" village only has electricity for part of the day, so the fan in our room was utterly useless, as was the light bulb! What we did have, though, was rats, scuttling up and down the corridor outside, and through our bags in the room. Come the morning, our food had been eaten, or torn into, and Holly's water bottle had been consumed. Wow! Hungry buggers....

The trip down the Mekong was lovely --- the scenery is stunning, and the river itself, depsite being a murky brown colour is amazing. Right now, it doesn't appear to be massively deep, so there are lots of eddies in the river, sometimes meaning that parts of it flowed in the opposite direction to the main body of the river. Because it's such a major route through Northern Laos, it hardly comes as a surprise to find out that we were also picking up and dropping off other passengers and cargo. What was a surprise though was when we picked up a live pig, trussed to a long bamboo pole, from one of the villages. Above the roar of the amazingly loud engines, our trip was gently punctuated with squeals of discomfort from this animal.

Finally, after 3 days travel, we arrived in Luang Prabang.