Slow boat down the Mekong, crossing into Laos
It takes about 3 days to get from Pai, Thailand to Luang Prabang, Laos. We left Pai at 8pm and hopped on board a mini-bus with about 10 other passengers. If I forgot to mention, the road to Pai is infamous for having exactly 762 hairpin turns (and it really does), so we took that same road back out of Pai, tried to doze in and out of sleep as much as possible on the 7 hour mini-bus ride to the border town of Chang Khong where we would then cross over into Laos. We got in Chang Khong about 3:30am (whewww), hopped out and crashed at a little guesthouse they had waiting for all us passengers. We slept about 3 hours, woke up, showered and grabbed breakfast at 7am. We were then transported to the border in the back of a pickup truck and prepared to cross the Mekong River to Laos to get our Visas. We jumped on board a little rowboat with a small motor and touted across the river, got out and spent a couple hours trying to figure out how to get our Visas, pay for our Visas, what line to wait in for our Visa, etc. We then headed on a tuk tuk about 3 more miles to where the loading area was for the slow boat that would then finally take us the 2 days to reach Luang Prabang. We were a bit concerned with the slow boat as we heard the seats were quite hard and we should even pick up pillows of our own to provide some extra comfort. But we found it not bad at all, the seats appeared removed from buses and reclined and were quite comfortable actually. Pleasantly surprised. We spent the first day on the slow boat going about 8 hours down the Mekong, the boat held about 70 other passengers. We read, ate some snacks and just soaked in the spectacular views. The Mekong is as wide as the Ohio in many places and yet thins considerably in others, but I’d say it’s about ½ the width of the Ohio in most parts and pretty smooth with a little mix of small churning water and rapids here and there. It was great! One of the best things we’ve done so far, beautiful and smooth ride and right on the water just cruising along (probably 15 mph or so). We stopped as it reached nightfall around 7pm at a small river town called Pak Bhan, where we all got out and grabbed a guest house for the night to get some rest and dinner. We watched the moon rise over the Mekong and had dinner that night on a guest house balcony restaurant. It was by far for one of the most picturesque moments we’ve witnessed: Very mountainous, with the Mekong below, jungle everywhere else along the mountains and the moonlight hitting the running Mekong river. Awesome!
We grabbed a quick breakfast that morning and boarded back on the slow boat for about another 8 hours to reach Luang Prabang, deeper within Laos. The boat that day was a bit more crowded, not quite as comfortable as the day before, but not bad. We both read a lot that day, snapped a few pics, and just enjoyed the ride. It’s just a much better experience, although slower, to get somewhere, but it really beats the hell out of a bus ride in my opinion. We got to Luang Prabang around 5pm, lugged our gear up the riverbank slope and trodded through the market to find a cheap guesthouse for the night.
Slow Boat down the Mekong River- CHECK!
Definitely something we were planning on doing and it was worth doing again. I really thought my brother Brent would have enjoyed this couple days a lot, right up his alley. Slide show coming next.
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