On a Slow Boat to Laos

Although we were loving riding through the plains of Thailand, we were getting a bit anxious to get into Laos if we were to complete our hopes of a Southeast Asia circumnavigation. This, coupled with our increasingly sore legs and butts prompted us to hop on a bus northward towards the border city of Koh Chang, where we then hopped on a longtailed boat with a guy from Boston who had ridden his loaded-down mountain bike over from Chiang Mai (only the third other cyclist encountered in Thailand!), and crossed the Mehkong River into Laos.

On the other side there was nothing more than a somewhat depressing border town, as the place was used by almost all travellers as a one night layover until they caught the slow boat down the river. The boat was really the only game in town, as the roads heading out were notoriously decrepit and beat up, and the mountains were looking a bit too ominous for our bikes. We bought our tickets for the two day slow boat ride, thinking that it couldn't be too bad and happy that we saved $1.20 per ticket by riding to the boat dock ourselves instead of paying for it through a travel "agent".

It turns out that a two day boat ride is really about as long as it sounds. The novelty of the hard wooden seats and views of the river scenery wore off in about 20 seconds, and for some 17 hours of our lives we were packed into a boat floating down the Mehkong with scads of other tourists and a good number of locals, who knew to sit up in the front of the boat where the air was freshest and the engine noise quietest. At times we felt like we were in some parallel universe people-safari, as the boat actually began to tip over from all the tourons rushing to take pictures of the local village dwellers performing everyday tasks with their telephoto lenses. Yes, this is how you get good pictures, but one can imagine how it would feel to be followed by boatloads of Paparazi was you went to the grocery, got off at your BART stop, or stepped out of the shower. It became annoyingly obscene at points, and the price that we paid for not putting up with the madness is a not so suprising lack of good people-photos from the trip. Thankfully the social life of our trip was saved by a largely disproportionate amount of Bay Area folk on the boat, including a rad lesbian couple living in the Mission in San Francisco. We hung out with them, swapped stories about life at home and on the road, at drank as much Nescafe Turbo as our stomaches could handle.

To add to the eternity-like feel of the trip, we stopped overnight in the small village of Pak Beng, about halfway before getting to Luang Prabang. Pak Beng, which used to be a small subsistence farming village, is now the major stop on the tourist trail down south. As soon as the boat pulled in, throngs of local children ranging from ages 4 to 24 hopped on and swarmed the luggage compartment in the rear. What followed for the next 30 minutes was a sea of chaos that revolved around these kids pulling up rucksacks from under the planks of the boat, throwing them to a friend, and then their compadre taking off running up the hill to a guest house. The foreigners have no choice but to follow their bag, where they are charged for the porter service and already have a room booked for them at the establishment. To add to the excitement, while Mat was in the back trying to catch our bright yellow panniers before they landed in the arms of an accomplice, a full-on fist-fight broke out between two of the adolescent boys, and a joking play-fight turned into a Muay Thai performance in mere seconds. While this scenario was hectic, stressful, and more reminiscint of India than anywhere we've been so far, it does show the complexity of an economy that so recently has had tourist dollars introduced. Yes, these kids are perhaps rude and inconsiderate, but in the end they're just trying to make a buck to buy food for their family and live another day. You can't blame them, but it does sometimes make the situation difficult.

Thankfully, by reasons unknown to us, the second day of boat travel went much quicker than the first. We both finished our excellent books, chatted with out new found friends, and managed to get our luggage off the boat without hassel or fistfight. Willing to overlook the experience of our first few days in Laos, we headed into Luang Prabang full of optimism for a city that Lonely Planet called "a tonic for the soul".