Well, after two days in the cargo hold of a big dirty boat, we have arrived in Luang Prabang.
After we last wrote, we took a bus to Chiang Khong at Thailand’s border with Laos. The bus ride was nice — there was good scenery and the bus was air conditioned and had reclining seats. When we arrived in Chiang Khong, we went to a guest house for a lime juice and ran into some Dutch people, which made Ian happy after three days with 10 Germans. Then we took a ferry across to Huay Xai in Laos.
Huay Xai is a cute little town. There were plenty of tourists there, almost all with the same intention as us: to take a boat to Luang Prabang. We had a nice room with a western toilet and a hot shower! This was a cause for much rejoicing.
In the morning, we bought our tickets to Luang Prabang. We expected a certain type of boat that we’d seen by the docking area and that we’d seen in pictures. What we got was a cargo ship and we literally sat in the cargo hold, which had short wide windows at the top of the walls so that you couldn’t see much but trees unless you stood up. I wasn’t psyched. There was a place at the bow where about 10 people could sit, so we spent some time out there too, but it got pretty uncomfortable since the bow points up and you had to sit sideways on the slope.
We spent last night in Pakbeng, a small town on the way. We expected this to be the low point of our journey from an accomodation and food perspective, but it was actually quite nice. We’ve found that our book is quite out-of-date; there is a lot more in Laos these days that it led us to believe. We spent the outrageous sum of $10 on our room, but I really wanted my own bathroom and shower (cold), so we did it anyway. In contrast, our room in Chiang Mai was about $4.
We walked around Pakbeng this morning and saw a market with lots of yummy food, like some sort of buffalo leg hanging from the ceiling (this generated a huge amount of interest from the locals) and another pig’s face, mmmmm. We also saw the monks going around for their alms rounds. This happens twice per day. The monks walk around with a big bowl and the people come out of their houses with an ornate bowl and they kneel on mats and say some sort of prayer-like thing over the food and then put some into each monk’s bowl as he passes.
Our boat ride today was somehow more bearable, despite being longer. I guess that was because this time the expectation was set correctly and the obnoxious band of Israeli backpackers were a bit more subdued today. I went up to the front of the boat in the afternoon and the guys driving the boat tried to get me to eat a fried worm. As you might have already guessed, they didn’t have much luck with that. However, they did get me to try some of the Lao whiskey (read: rubbing alcohol) that they were drinking all day. We arrived at Luang Prabang at about 4:00.
Luang Prabang is a nice town. On the main street where we are now, one could be convinced that he was on University Avenue in Palo Alto (the main street of the most affluent town in America, for those unfamiliar with it). This has been a surprise to both of us. We expected a much less developed atmosphere. On our walk after dinner, we saw another thing that our book told us that we’d see: fried chicken feet! I could hardly hold myself back. The kip were just flying out of my pocket. As a bonus, the feet were paired with, you guessed it, fried chicken heads. A culinary delight.
The plan for tomorrow is to go to the Pak Ou caves (yes, Mom, we’ll avoid the areas that the State Department said to avoid) and then come back to Luang Prabang for some Christmas shopping. We bought our ticket for Vientiane today, and we’ll be heading there on Friday afternoon.
That’s about all for now. I suspect that we’ll write again before we head to Vientiane.