Slow boat to Thailand

The plan is to travel two full days up the Mekong, fighting the current all the way to the Lao city of Hua Xai just opposite of the Thai border crossing at Chiang Khong. Traveling from sunup to sundown each day still requires an overnight stop at Pak Beng, a small town whose entire existance seems to revolve around accomodating river travelers. Our boat is the typical stretched out, wooden, Lao-style cargo boat that moves people and goods up and down the Mekong every day. This particular run consists of Lao villagers, who hop on and off the boat at random settlements along the way, a half dozen foreigners who are, like me, headed to Thailand, and a cargo of hundred pound bags of rice and wood flooring packaged for export. No food on board - we were warned to bring our own - but plenty of beer and soda sold at a small bar located towards the back of the boat by a mostly sullen and/or extremely bored young woman.

The first day of easy motoring was passed with lots of reading (I'm trying to knock back a third-hand Hemingway book I found in Vientiane) and chatting over drinks with the other travelers on board - a couple of Aussies (always Aussies), a couple of Kiwis (never confuse the two), a German on his way to India to practice yoga, and a mute, bald-headed, ukulele strumming guy dressed all in black. As he never really said much, I can only assume he was a Bulgarian nihilist. He was nice enough, though.

The Mekong itself was beautiful - a wide, muddy river winding through jungle covered mountains. Here and there were thatch-roofed homes built high above the high water mark, a more substantial village every so often, but no roads that I could see. The Mekong appeared to provide the only real modes of transport in this corner of Laos, boats of all sizes including a few big barges hauling heavy loads of teak logs to upstream to Thailand or further into Yunnan province in China.

After spending so much time on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon, I was excited to travel on a large, silt-laden, mostly undamned (for now.....and yes, the pun was intended) river. Except for the surrounding topography, this is what the Colorado would look like without its own monsterous dams: massive beaches of freshly deposited sand and sediment lining both banks (most of it recently planted with corn by local villagers....just like the Anasazi would have done) and a high-water zone stretching 30 to 40 meters up the bank devoid of any vegetation, native or otherwise. Looking at all that beautiful Mekong sand, I couldn't help but curse Glen Canyon Dam, or the dams currently being considered for construction further upstream in China. Anyway, the river itself has a fairly strong current, but no real rapids to speak of on this stretch. A very good thing considering that the few tricky pockets of eddies and cross-currents that we encountered caused the skinny boat to list quite a bit - even tossing some cargo around at one point. Of course, none of this was helped by the foreigners' refusal leave the sunny side of the boat in order to evenly distribute the weight, even against the (weak) admonitions of the crew. They (the crew) just shrugged, lit more cigarettes, and kept chugging along.

We pulled into Pak Beng after dark and had just enough time to to find rooms, dinner, and take hot-water bucket baths before the village generators shut down around 9pm. My cruddy little room, cramped and cell-like as it was, was perched on a balcony fifty feet directly above the river and, under the full moon, I had the most amazing views of the Mekong and its river gorge as the stars came up for the night. Another one of those moments that makes any of the previous hassles or discomforts all worth while.....or mostly worth while.

The following day was more of the same. Shoved off at 8am on a different, slightly less sea-worthy boat and by mid-day, the country was opening up to the west. Now the left hand bank was all Thailand and just before sundown, we arrived in Hua Xai. The border posts were closed for the day, as I figured they would be, and I found a cheap and grotty room not far from the boat ferry. The next morning I went straight down to immigration to get stamped out just as the office was opening for the day and although there were a dozen backpackers lined up to enter Laos, I was the only one heading the other direction. Consequently I had the ferry boat all to myself as it went back across to the far bank and, after blowing my last 40 kip on a latte (these border towns are so sophisticated), I jumped on board and bowed goodbye to Laos - five minutes later I stepped off the boat and officially entered the Kingdom of Thailand.