Rather than brave the roads and bump around in a mini-van for some 10 hours to Huay Xai (pronounced way sigh), we opted to take the slow boat up the Mekong. This gave us two days of slow cruising past scenery that you’d only see from the river, with an overnight stop halfway in a small village called Pak Beng.
Much of what we saw on the first day was wild, virgin rain forest, so thick, dense and green
and it was a wonderful trip and I barely looked at a book for the entire first day.
Every now and then we’d go past a small village but these were few and far between.
The boat we travelled on was pretty basic but was fitted out with some hard case soft seats, similar to airline or bus seats but not attached to the floor (we discovered this when I jumped up in excitement to look at a Mahout and his elephant working on the river bank and Euan nearly ended up on the floor). This is a boat the same as the one we were travelling on
This was the other option, a very noisy, very dangerous but very fast speedboat (they’ve been described as surfboards with car engines strapped to the back). We met up with Natalie and Lindon, a cat crazy couple (Lindon even carried sachets of cat food round in his pockets! Brilliant!) who we’d met in Vang Vieng, and they’d just travelled down from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang on one. Lindon said that two days later he still had a sore arse. There are no seats, you’re sitting on the bare boards of the boat cross-legged and you can’t look around you or your helmet is blown sideways or backwards and chokes you with the chinstrap. It sounded very funny but also very uncomfortable. The other thing is that they’re rather dangerous. There were so many logs and debris floating in the Mekong and if one of those things hits anything solid, they flip (hence the crash helmets), plus the fact the captain (if you can call them that..) is often looking into the sun so can't see diddly.
There was so much to look at on the slow boat, especially given that it seems to move only slightly faster than jogging speed! Spotting a Mahout with his elephant on the riverbank was a lucky sighting (they're difficult enough to spot in the photo!), as while there are a few working elephants in Laos, they’re fast being made redundant by modern machinery.
We’ve seen so many of these pale water buffalo throughout China and Laos and while they’re not albino they very definitely get sun burnt! Most of the ones we saw were a distinct shade of pink under the fawny-coloured hair.
We stopped off a few times to offload goods at the various villages along the way
and we came across a boat that had a broken propeller and was drifting in the current so we towed them to safety
and another boat had docked (or grounded more like it) with a spare propeller that was offloaded and handed over
We were late arriving in Pak Beng and were the last boat in which didn’t bode well for us in our search for a half decent room for the night! We ended up somewhere that was a touch above the other dives we’d been shown (our benchmark for grunge accommodation is the place we stayed at in Acco, Israel) and while it was a touch above the Acco accommodation, we still resigned ourselves to a potentially uncomfortable sleep (but it was incredibly cheap at US$5).
Pak Beng is really only visited as a stop-off point due to its location halfway between Huay Xai and Luang Prabang. There isn’t anything to really see in Pak Beng so I don’t think many stay there more than one night but there are enough guest houses and restaurants to feed and house the masses, albeit for a very short period of time. This is pretty much the main street of Pak Beng viewed from the river. Generators provide power and these are turned off at around 10:30pm, after which there is absolute silence (unless the dogs kick off after a rat which is what was happening outside our room).
We stayed in the place furthest to the left of the photo facing the river. Two weeks ago the slip on the right hand side hadn’t happened and there was a building there.
We had some great travel companions, Shawn from Canada and Aoy from Thailand and we really enjoyed their company. Shawn had been in Laos a few weeks before so could tell us where was good to stay/eat in Pak Beng and generally helped us out in all travel matters between Laos and Thailand and Aoy kindly wrote us out an entire menu in both Thai and English. We’re set for our time in Thailand!! We happily soaked up their advice and will definitely be in touch with them when we’re in Chiang Mai where they live.
Much of what we saw on the first day was wild, virgin rain forest, so thick, dense and green
and it was a wonderful trip and I barely looked at a book for the entire first day.
Every now and then we’d go past a small village but these were few and far between.
The boat we travelled on was pretty basic but was fitted out with some hard case soft seats, similar to airline or bus seats but not attached to the floor (we discovered this when I jumped up in excitement to look at a Mahout and his elephant working on the river bank and Euan nearly ended up on the floor). This is a boat the same as the one we were travelling on
This was the other option, a very noisy, very dangerous but very fast speedboat (they’ve been described as surfboards with car engines strapped to the back). We met up with Natalie and Lindon, a cat crazy couple (Lindon even carried sachets of cat food round in his pockets! Brilliant!) who we’d met in Vang Vieng, and they’d just travelled down from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang on one. Lindon said that two days later he still had a sore arse. There are no seats, you’re sitting on the bare boards of the boat cross-legged and you can’t look around you or your helmet is blown sideways or backwards and chokes you with the chinstrap. It sounded very funny but also very uncomfortable. The other thing is that they’re rather dangerous. There were so many logs and debris floating in the Mekong and if one of those things hits anything solid, they flip (hence the crash helmets), plus the fact the captain (if you can call them that..) is often looking into the sun so can't see diddly.
There was so much to look at on the slow boat, especially given that it seems to move only slightly faster than jogging speed! Spotting a Mahout with his elephant on the riverbank was a lucky sighting (they're difficult enough to spot in the photo!), as while there are a few working elephants in Laos, they’re fast being made redundant by modern machinery.
We’ve seen so many of these pale water buffalo throughout China and Laos and while they’re not albino they very definitely get sun burnt! Most of the ones we saw were a distinct shade of pink under the fawny-coloured hair.
We stopped off a few times to offload goods at the various villages along the way
and we came across a boat that had a broken propeller and was drifting in the current so we towed them to safety
and another boat had docked (or grounded more like it) with a spare propeller that was offloaded and handed over
We were late arriving in Pak Beng and were the last boat in which didn’t bode well for us in our search for a half decent room for the night! We ended up somewhere that was a touch above the other dives we’d been shown (our benchmark for grunge accommodation is the place we stayed at in Acco, Israel) and while it was a touch above the Acco accommodation, we still resigned ourselves to a potentially uncomfortable sleep (but it was incredibly cheap at US$5).
Pak Beng is really only visited as a stop-off point due to its location halfway between Huay Xai and Luang Prabang. There isn’t anything to really see in Pak Beng so I don’t think many stay there more than one night but there are enough guest houses and restaurants to feed and house the masses, albeit for a very short period of time. This is pretty much the main street of Pak Beng viewed from the river. Generators provide power and these are turned off at around 10:30pm, after which there is absolute silence (unless the dogs kick off after a rat which is what was happening outside our room).
We stayed in the place furthest to the left of the photo facing the river. Two weeks ago the slip on the right hand side hadn’t happened and there was a building there.
We had some great travel companions, Shawn from Canada and Aoy from Thailand and we really enjoyed their company. Shawn had been in Laos a few weeks before so could tell us where was good to stay/eat in Pak Beng and generally helped us out in all travel matters between Laos and Thailand and Aoy kindly wrote us out an entire menu in both Thai and English. We’re set for our time in Thailand!! We happily soaked up their advice and will definitely be in touch with them when we’re in Chiang Mai where they live.
The scenery on the second day was very different. The jungle had been extensively logged and the presence of humans was very clear and I’m surprised to find that I did not take any photos. It was a long two days of travel but two days we wouldn’t have missed and certainly didn’t regret not taking the speedboat or the minivan!
We had the added bonus of going against the traffic as most travellers go downriver to Luang Prabang from Thailand and have a slightly more squished experience on the boats.
The maps online don't show Pak Beng or Huay Xai so just follow the Mekong River from Luang Prabang in Laos to Chiang Khong in Thailand (its just across the river from Huay Xai) and thats the route we took!
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