I have now woken up twice in my life on a boat on the Mekong to set sail at 6.30am, albeit this time it wasn’t planned! All I can say is that Northern Laos in February is a lot colder than Sothern Vietnam in April.As we were so behind time, we had to get going at first light. And we had to move fast – it felt like we were being pursued by demons… It was bitter – it had been cold all night anyway under my grubby blanket, but with the wind whipping as we raced along it was worse. The light had changed completely from the bright blue and greens of yesterday afternoon to brooding, misty, beiges, browns and greys. It looked like a different river. I delved into my case and put on every icebreaker top I possessed, wrapped my LV scarf around my head, it almost did the trick but not quite. There is also obviously some issue with boiling water on a fast moving boat (which I can understand) but it meant that no coffee was available till we moored up in Pakbeng two hours later. But I was excited to be here. The only downside was that we had just sailed past the deluxe Langsuay Lodge where I had meant to be sleeping – it looked wonderful. But no matter, I could get off the boat and go into the Pakbeng Lodge (where Ant stayed last year) and borrow their bathroom for a quick wash and brush up – and a decent loo (sorry, this is turning into loo stories….). I was shown the way off the boat, only to be faced with an almost vertical wall of black rock to get up – slip and you would be lost in the Mekong forever. Even with the lure of a proper clean loo couldn’t make me risk it, so on the boat I stayed, with the boat boy for company. The captain’s wife had popped up to Pakbeng market to buy breakfast, but before she went was concerned about what I could eat as I was a “vegetarian”. From the choices I could understand were available I went for sticky rice and soy sauce. I would have preferred a nice baguette and a latte to a buffalo lung with chilli, but these didn’t appear on the menu. Also for lunch she announced she would make me vegetable soup, which given how cold it was, sounded fantastic (it was). Coffee was made and as we continued sailing, breakfast was served on the floor (see pic). What a great way to have breakfast with the Mekong whizzing by. And the sticky rice and soy sauce was surprisingly good. We continue along and eventually some sun starts to peek through the mist. The top of the boat is opened to let in the sun and warm us all up – real life solar heating! But it took till about 2 pm before I could lose the grubby but warming blanket. My veggie lunch was served – more rice but great green vegetables with it as a soup. Just after lunch we finally make a sightseeing stop at the Pak Ou caves – caves of a thousand Buddha’s. These are ancient caves where local people come and leave small Buddha statues as offerings and I light a candle and incense for Kev (you can see these in the picture of the cave), just as Ant had done when he was here. It’s a lovely place, and I learn more about all the different Buddha types – meditation Buddha, stop fighting Buddha, start raining Buddha, sleeping Buddha, stop raining Buddha etc. There are lots of them and all arranged higgledy piggledy on the rock shelves. It’s a popular place and when we arrived there were quite few boats. We had to moor up next to one and walk through. Sod’s law, it was the Luangsay boat that I would have been on had all gone to plan – it did look nice……
From there we move down to the whisky and rice wine making village. And as you know, I do love a glass of cold white wine. But looking at the village production of the rice wine wasn’t encouraging. It’s made very differently from yer French stuff – a couple of kilo’s of rice, a few litres of river water and a dash of yeast. All left in a stone pot in the sun for a few weeks, then strained and bottled. The whiskey still was even more primitive – again I think the base is rice. Often it is bottled with a snake or a scorpion in to give extra flavour. I declined the free tasting….
After that we sail on to our destination and I finally end the unusual but good journey in Luang Prabang. Luckily at this end there are porters to carry my heavy bag up the steep stairs to the road, from where I am taken to the bijou boutique “Chang Inn”. The hotel is a lovely old house, all dark polished wood, but does have a rather eclectic mix of objects strewn about. I haven’t seen much of Luang Prabang as yet, but it has a great vibe. I’m looking forward to finding out more.
