Friday, May 05, 2006

Luang Prabang

So we have arrived in Luang Prabang. Only took us three days to get here....

We left Chiang Mai on Tuesday morning. We had booked the entire trip through our trusty guesthouse owner. Sure enough, we found ourselves getting on to the type of hiace mini-van we have become accustomed to for our travel needs! Scanning the list of those who had already boarded and signed in, we noticed the names of two english guys and 2 irish guys. At the next stop, we picked up 2 irish girls, followed by a scottish couple! So off went the United Nations of Great Britain and Ireland (even though, it really felt like Great Britain and Cork as the two other girls were from Cork also). Much banter and wit followed, as you can imagine.

It took about, hmm, say 6 hours altogether to get to Chiang Khong via Chiang Rai. Look at your map of the world now, find Thailand, then find northeast Thailand and you may find it there along the river Mekhong. Probably because of the hours the border guys work, we had to stay a night here by the river. What to do eh? Well thankfully a rather nice bar across the road allowed us to watch "Old School" and "Wedding Crashers' (our fix of the Wilsons and Vince Vaughan now good for another few months) for the evening. A film! Except for the racket of crickets and paranoia that we were being eaten alive by mosquitos, we almost felt at home... ;o)

Up pretty early the next morning to go through a very straightforward Thai departure process, onto a boat that was 1 person wide and about 50 long! We were ferried across the river to the Laos border. All was very well handled and we had our visas stamped and money exchanged in no time. Then we had a bit of a waiting game where we were asked for our passports another time, off by taxi to the port, then another passport check. I suppose we finally left the port of Huay Xai at around 11.00.

The breeze blowing in our hair; the beautiful scenery around us; the now well-established conversations with complete strangers about all the various itineraries and experiences we have all had. We felt like we had more than enough to entertain us for two days on the boat. Now we reckon it's about 350km from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang, so we knew we were in for a bit of a haul. MP3 players well fueled, plenty of water and tissue paper (those who have travelled in this part of the world are now nodding their heads...), some crackers etc. We knew it was going to be somewhat uncomfortable , but after one hour of straight up, hard backed and hard seated wood, we were sore. And another 13 hours of this to face!! The well-travelled amongst us had soft cushions that work for bums, necks and heads on boats, planes and buses. Must find some..... ;o)

We spent a night at a place called Pak Bheng, literally on the banks of the Mekhong - stunning location - basic accomodation. Most of the people we knew from the boat ended up in the same restaurant, drinking Beerlao until the power went out at 23.00 (quite common here apparently). We were lit up by a few candles which of course attracted the attentions of all kinds of weird and wonderful bugs, who kept diving for the light and burning their wings. It wasn't long before we were run out of the place by them!

Day two was pretty uneventful, spent mostly sizing up the other passengers, trying to identify nationalities and developing slang words for the nationalities in question. Any time we stopped at a port, be it a small town or large one, all the passengers came alive. It was like being in a zoo, watching people watching you! And most of all, day two was spent trying to get some relief from the hard wood....


So we finally saw a change in the river and the scenery about an hour outside Luang Prabang. Once we docked, we hiked off and found ourselves a very "splurge" guesthouse in comparison to what we've had over the last three weeks! My pillow has never been so soft, a bathroom never so plush, bed linen never so clean!! We felt like we were in heaven.

Luang Prabang is a very, very pretty spot; easy to see why it has been given world heritage status by UNESCO. The people are also so hospitable and friendly. We wandered around a bit today, climbed up to a small wat high up on a hill in the centre of the town. It started to thunderstorm and fork lightning crept up on us. And where are we? At the highest point, in an open space with a spire sticking up into the sky. At least our shoes have rubber soles!


Dublin - Hong Kong - Thailand - Laos - Vietnam - Cambodia - Malaysia - Singapore - Australia - New Zealand - Chile - Bolivia - Peru - Argentina - Brazil - Dublin

No comments: