As you know the two things I need when travelling are a good safe boat and a sparkly loo. It was for this reason that for my two day trip down the Mekong to Luang Prabang from Thailand I treated myself and booked the only luxe way to do it. My Luangsay cruise promised a big boat with few people, a slow languorous ride down the river stopping every now and then to see the local life, good meals, a bar and in their words “two extremely clean Western toilets”. The night was to be spent in the Luangsay Lodge at Pakbeng, half way through the trip, and this promised luxury living on the river, with a great restaurant, fab bathrooms, and individual bamboo cottages dotting the hillside overlooking the Mekong, with aircon.So what am I doing on an ordinary boat (albeit big and painted a rather fetching shade of lime green as you can see in the pic) – one of the long thin ones where the family live in the small bit on the back, in the company of the guide and the family who consist of the boat captain, the wife, the baby and the nephew who is the boatboy? And to make it worse, yes there is a loo, but I discover it is one of those squat Asian ones, a personal bête noir and a skill I struggle to master…. It looks like I will be sleeping on it too (the boat, hopefully not the squat loo….) Let me explain – I’ll try not to take too long, but there again I do have two days to fill….
As requested, yesterday I was up on time and down in reception at 6.30 am awaiting my transfer to Chiang Khong where I would take a small ferry over the Mekong to Houie Say in Laos to pick up my luxury boat. I waited and waited and waited until I realised that no one was coming – it got too late to make it to the border in time for the 9am sailing. Thank God for Skype I thought, I can use my new found language skills to phone the travel agent who organised this and say “weh the fu i my tahee?” But of course it was Sunday and no amount of emailing, Skypeing or phoning was getting a response. Giving up, and deciding they just got the day wrong, I re booked my room for the night at the fabulous Luck Swan (still no food by the way….) and would be back down at reception the next day at the same time. According to the website, the Luangsay cruises didn’t go Sunday's anyway, only Monday’s so I must be right. Monday becomes like Groundhog day, again I rise before dawn and am down in reception at 6.30 am. And like Groundhog day, still no one turned up. But at least today is Monday and I finally got through to the travel agents (in Vietnam) to sort it out.
I was told it was the cruise company at fault….. As the Luangsay posh boat had already left, they offered me the alternative of a private boat which I decided to take as the next Luangsay boat doesn’t leave till Thursday – I have a flight to Cambodia on Sunday, and frankly had already stayed a day longer than planned in Chiang Rai because of yesterday, I didn’t want to lose any more of my Laos time. I made sure that I would be on a good boat with a decent bathroom. Yes yes they said, everything will be the same. You will stay at the Luangsay Lodge and the rest of the week in Laos will be the same, except I would need to lose a day somewhere. I opted to lose the day in Vientiane as Ant tells me Luang Prabang is so much nicer. I have to admit I was a little sceptical that I could make it all on time, everything you read says you need to leave Houie Say (the Thai/Laos border) at 11am latest to make it to Pakbeng before dark when the boats must stop. I told myself it would just mean a few less stops, they obviously knew what they were doing.
So 11am saw me finally in my minivan to make the 1.5 hour journey to the border. Crossing a land border like this is fun – very different and much more laid back than the usual airport channels. Departing Thailand, I had to board a small narrow ferry to cross the river to Laos – an experience shall we say, and at times like this I wish I could travel a bit lighter – at least when you fly someone else carries the bags! But undeterred, I make it, and meet my guide on the other side. Poor guy, he had been waiting there since 8am this morning (like me, he thought we would both be boarding the luxury Luangsay cruise…..). He guides me through the formalities and we hop into a tuk tuk to catch the private boat. Now I know I my new SE Asia Esperanto is quite good, but I haven’t yet got the hang of the Lao dialect. As the conversation progressed, even I could understand that the boatman was saying “too late, too late”. The realisation dawned – we could not make Pakbeng by sunset. The solution said the guide happily, was no problem, “we just sleep on the boat”. I thought of the solution of booking into the swishest place in town for the night and sleeping in a proper bed, until I realised that that would cut my Laos time down by yet another day. So why not, I thought, having checked that the boat I would be on would have a “good bathroom”. Yes, yes, said the guide. No, no, I realised when I was sailing along – said bathroom was a squat Asian one in a wooden hut on the back…. So here I am navigating the Mekong trying to drink as little as possible at the thought of an Asian loo on a moving boat….. And talking of drinking – my vision of a cold white wine with lunch as the scenery slips by also slipped away with this change of plan – yes they have beer on the boat – and water – I hate beer, but tonight as I lay my head down on the hard wooden deck of a boat in the cold night air, I may just reach for one...
