The 6 hour car ride wasn't bad, as we made friends with our fellow travelers and stopped a couple times along the way to stretch and snack, as well as view the famous White Temple in Chiang Rai. However nerves were high when we arrived at the border town, expecting this hotel to be a POS motel in the middle of nowhere with no electricity or running water. However, we were quite pleasantly surprised to see we had our own lovely room with comfortable beds and even mosquito net canopies draping over them-so cool! We had a delicious pad Thai dinner and spent a while surfing the net before realizing we were bored out of our minds and retreated to bed.
The next morning was the dreaded boat trip. Oh how we did not want it to begin! 2 days, 8 hours per day, sitting on wooden benches on a crowded open boat floating down the Mekong river. After an extremely stressful morning of getting through immigration, getting a visa for Laos, being passed as a group from one tour company to the next, nearly missing the boat, and an extreme amount of sitting and waiting, it was finally time to board the boat! To our pleasant surprise, the wooden seats were replaced with comfy(er) car seats and the boat wasn't completely full, meaning there was room to spread out. Jaimie and I each got our own "rear bench seat" for 2! The boat was full of all tourists, almost all English speaking, with maybe 5 Thais total. We made some friends, napped, read, drank Lao beer, took in the gorgeous scenery, avoided the sun like the plague, and just relaxed! Definitely not as bad as we expected!! We stopped a few times on the journey down to pick up local Thai and Lao people and all of their children and belongings. I'm not sure if they were moving or traveling or what, but they had quite a lot of stuff! Finally around 6:30 pm we arrived in Pak Bang, our destination for the day. Jaimie and I collected bags while our new German friend Nadia ran up the hill to find a good hotel at a good price--success! 2 rooms for 150 baht each, meaning Jaimie and I only paid about $2.50 each! We dropped off our things and set off to find dinner, immediately coming across first a baby (huge) tarantula, and second, some of the biggest bugs I'd ever seen (but we had no idea what was coming)! We settled in at a little Indian restaurant where half of our boat also settled, and the food was quite delicious and cheap! After dinner, since it was still only 8pm and 'supposedly' this town had no electricity, only generator power until 10pm, we decided to check out the one and only bar in town. Mind you we are staying in a teeny tiny fishing village whose only access to civilian life is by this river. The local people all either rent out rooms in their houses to tourists off this boat, or own restaurants that cater to these tourists. So, we arrive at the bar and big surprise! We're the only ones there. Luckily 2 minutes later some Irish and Spanish people from our boat came in, so we joined them for a Lao beer and a chat and headed home around 10pm. Here's where it gets good. On our way back we encountered a grasshopper that deserves a friggin PAGE in the Guinness Book of World Records! This monster was more than half the size of my foot and nearly 2 inches tall. If there was ever something to both amaze me and give me the eeby geeby's at the same time, this was it!
The next morning we were up bright and early for the third and final day of our journey. The owner of our guesthouse made us a lovely breakfast of potato omelets and bread, as well as a chicken sandwich to take on the boat. By 8am we were boarding the boat to ensure we would have good seats again. Unfortunately this day we switched boats and were stuck with fewer seats, so no one got to spread out, it was a full house! Let the reading and relaxation commence! Really for as much as we were dreading this journey, it turned out to be quite wonderful. I wouldn't necessarily want to do it again, but I'm so thankful we did it the first time and it's a memory that will be with me forever. This day's journey was a couple hours longer than the previous day's, but luckily we had great people sitting around us, so we made friends with many people of all ages and ethnicities. We arrived in Luang Prabang finally around 6pm, settled into a guesthouse, and were happy to be off the boat!!
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| White Temple in Chiang Rai |
The next morning was the dreaded boat trip. Oh how we did not want it to begin! 2 days, 8 hours per day, sitting on wooden benches on a crowded open boat floating down the Mekong river. After an extremely stressful morning of getting through immigration, getting a visa for Laos, being passed as a group from one tour company to the next, nearly missing the boat, and an extreme amount of sitting and waiting, it was finally time to board the boat! To our pleasant surprise, the wooden seats were replaced with comfy(er) car seats and the boat wasn't completely full, meaning there was room to spread out. Jaimie and I each got our own "rear bench seat" for 2! The boat was full of all tourists, almost all English speaking, with maybe 5 Thais total. We made some friends, napped, read, drank Lao beer, took in the gorgeous scenery, avoided the sun like the plague, and just relaxed! Definitely not as bad as we expected!! We stopped a few times on the journey down to pick up local Thai and Lao people and all of their children and belongings. I'm not sure if they were moving or traveling or what, but they had quite a lot of stuff! Finally around 6:30 pm we arrived in Pak Bang, our destination for the day. Jaimie and I collected bags while our new German friend Nadia ran up the hill to find a good hotel at a good price--success! 2 rooms for 150 baht each, meaning Jaimie and I only paid about $2.50 each! We dropped off our things and set off to find dinner, immediately coming across first a baby (huge) tarantula, and second, some of the biggest bugs I'd ever seen (but we had no idea what was coming)! We settled in at a little Indian restaurant where half of our boat also settled, and the food was quite delicious and cheap! After dinner, since it was still only 8pm and 'supposedly' this town had no electricity, only generator power until 10pm, we decided to check out the one and only bar in town. Mind you we are staying in a teeny tiny fishing village whose only access to civilian life is by this river. The local people all either rent out rooms in their houses to tourists off this boat, or own restaurants that cater to these tourists. So, we arrive at the bar and big surprise! We're the only ones there. Luckily 2 minutes later some Irish and Spanish people from our boat came in, so we joined them for a Lao beer and a chat and headed home around 10pm. Here's where it gets good. On our way back we encountered a grasshopper that deserves a friggin PAGE in the Guinness Book of World Records! This monster was more than half the size of my foot and nearly 2 inches tall. If there was ever something to both amaze me and give me the eeby geeby's at the same time, this was it!
The next morning we were up bright and early for the third and final day of our journey. The owner of our guesthouse made us a lovely breakfast of potato omelets and bread, as well as a chicken sandwich to take on the boat. By 8am we were boarding the boat to ensure we would have good seats again. Unfortunately this day we switched boats and were stuck with fewer seats, so no one got to spread out, it was a full house! Let the reading and relaxation commence! Really for as much as we were dreading this journey, it turned out to be quite wonderful. I wouldn't necessarily want to do it again, but I'm so thankful we did it the first time and it's a memory that will be with me forever. This day's journey was a couple hours longer than the previous day's, but luckily we had great people sitting around us, so we made friends with many people of all ages and ethnicities. We arrived in Luang Prabang finally around 6pm, settled into a guesthouse, and were happy to be off the boat!!
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| on the water taxi with Nadja |
Hot damn that looks absolutely awesome! So why haven't you eaten any of these bugs yet?
ReplyDeleteAnd happy birthday! Can't wait to hear about THAT blog.
ReplyDelete