Days 111 – 113: Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang

Photos: http://princeton.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2058082&l=05451&id=1101094

The following morning I left Chiang Mai on a three day journey that would take me to Luang Prabang, in the heart of northern Laos. I’d spend the first day on a minibus bound for the Thai-Lao border and the following two days on a slow boat down the Mekong. I’d heard good and bad reviews of the slow boat ride, but I figured I couldn’t pass up at least one ride down the Mekong.

The first day on the minibus was unremarkable; nearly everyone on the bus was from either France or Holland, so the language of choice was French, and my activity of choice became plugging my ears with my iPod. There was one old British couple sitting behind me, but their conversation was far more painful to listen to than the French.

We arrived at Chiang Khong, situated right on the Mekong, just before dark and checked into the guesthouse that had been reserved for the whole minibus. That night I ate my final Thai dinner and watched Roger Federer lose in the Australian Open semifinals. Views of Laos over the Mekong were quite nice at sundown.

The following morning we all crossed the Mekong into Laos and went through a surprisingly streamlined process to obtain our visas. The visas cost $35, but we had to pay an extra dollar for “overtime” because it was Saturday.

We set off on the slow boat around 11, and immediately I realized that I had to adjust my expectations for the boat ride. I was hoping for a boat packed with locals, bikes, motorcycles, and farm animals; instead I was on a boat packed with Western tourists. We picked up a few locals along the way, but they stayed “out of the way,” at the front of the boat. I imagine they felt even more out of place than I did.

Some of the Westerners on the boat were the long-term backpacking variety, and I got along with them ok. But a surprisingly large minority, if not plurality, were middle-aged Europeans lugging hard suitcases. I hadn’t seen a hard suitcase since Ko Phi Phi, and I wasn’t thrilled to be reintroduced. Apparently I had left the backpacker tourist trail in Thailand and fallen onto the middle-aged hard suitcase tourist trail in Laos. Oops.

And one more thing about my fellow passengers: 95% of them chain-smoked all the way down the river. By the end of the day, I had secondhand smoked at least a few packs. I think my brand of choice is Marlboro Lights.

But aside from the clientèle, the boat ride was quite pleasant. The morning cloud cover left me digging up the fleece jacket from the bottom of my pack, but the clouds broke in mid-afternoon and the rest of the ride was warm and filled with many a breathtaking vista of green mountains, palm trees, and the mighty Mekong.

We arrived at Pak Beng, the approximate halfway point between Chiang Khong and Luang Prabang, just before sunset. A simple river outpost, the whole of Pak Beng now seems dedicated to housing Western travelers. Something like 90% of the buildings in town were either guesthouses or restaurants catering to Westerners. The upside was that I had no trouble finding a cheap bed for the night.

I ate dinner with a couple of Canadians I had met aboard the boat. They lived in Vancouver and were traveling for six months through Southeast Asia, so we had fun exchanging itineraries and travel stories. I ordered the chicken curry for dinner and was surprised when it was hardly spicy. I’d heard that Lao food was quite a bit more bland than Thai food, and so far that certainly seems to be the case.

That night, back at my guesthouse, I took my first hot shower since southern Thailand. It was glorious. I went to bed early, which was fortunate because by midnight roosters began crowing outside my window and I hardly slept for the rest of the night. I yelled “Shut up!” out my window quite a few times, but the confused roosters kept at it.

The following morning we climbed back aboard the boat and set off for our second day floating down the Mekong. The weather was considerably better, and I rode most of the way without my fleece. Between chapters of On the Road I talked with a German guy who was traveling through the region for a month. He told me a hilarious story about meeting a Thai girl in Chiang Mai who turned out to live in a huge house in a gated community; he ended up spending just short of a week staying at her house, swimming in her pool, and getting a VIP tour of Chiang Mai and environs. I immediately resolved to talk to more local girls.

We arrived in Luang Prabang just as the sun was setting, and I hurried to find a guesthouse before dark, but everywhere I went there were no rooms available. This annoyed me less because I had to keep walking from door to door, and more because I realized that the city must be packed with tourists. I finally found a vacant room—although it looked more like a prison cell, with cement walls, no windows, and a mattress on the floor. And at 70,000 kip (~$7), it was a bargain—Luang Prabang accommodation is not cheap.

I dropped my pack in my prison cell and went out in search of food. I passed a row of restaurants and cafés thronged with Westerners and headed for the night market, where food stalls serving meat-on-a-stick and other mystery foods lined the sidewalks. I paid 10,000 kip (~$1) for a huge chicken breast on a stick and 5,000 kip for half a pineapple and wandered around the colonial streets devouring the food. On the way back to the guesthouse I picked up a donut for 3,000 kip. How I love street food.