This post is a little late given it's already Monday! Ha! But I wasn't able to find an internet cafe to work on this until today.
Ok, to bring you all up to speed.......or slow in our case! We left Chiang Khong on a ferry across the Mekong in the morning. The day before we had given our passports, $35, and a pic with a Laos app to the hotel guy running the hotel as they would get us our visas (for a nominal charge of 200 baht). We just didn't want to screw with it. He told us we could get the passports at 8 a.m. on Friday with the visa. Well, 8 a.m. and the guy was nowhere to be found...8:30...nothing...9:00 and he still wasn't there and we're sitting on our asses waiting. Finally he strolls in and we go...hey dude...where's the passports and he goes...let's go, let's go. We say..go where, and he says to Thai immigration to get your passport stamped to leave the country. Now we knew we could of done that ourselves and saved us 200 baht each in the process, as that was simple. But then we find out the dude didn't have our visas and we would have to go across to Laos and get it on our own anyway!!! So we say...give us our 200 baht back...we'll do this ourselves and finally after much delay and words, they give us our money back and we go merrily on our way. We find a ferry to take us and the bikes across, then we arrive at the dock in Laos............
Big Red Settled into the ferry.....
Well Hello Laos! At the ferry landing.
We had absolutely no problems getting our visas...in and out in 15 minutes. We then were planning to search around for either a slow boat (2 day trip) or fast boat down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang. A guy came up to us and asked if we wanted a slow boat as he needed 4 more people for his party to fill the boat (1st lie). We told him we thought we might be interested in paying for a fast boat and rent the whole boat for us and the bikes (we'd been told the night before at a rental agency that the cost would be 10,000 baht or about $350. I told Colin I was prepared to pay $250 of the cost just to save us a day. Anyway the guy went on and on that no fast boat would take us and the bikes (2nd lie) and that it would cost us probably $500 (3rd lie). So we opted to go with this guys group and the slow boat he said he had chartered (4th lie). We picked up some food and the guy gave us the rundown on the boat, then sold us an advance room at Pak Bang in a guest house (we were glad we did buy it too!) for 400 baht each. The slow boat he said was 800 baht (divide by 30 to $) and we'd have to also pay 1/2 of that for our bikes (5th lie). So we shelled out 1200 baht ($40) to the guy and found the boat. To find that the boat was not his boat but a full public boat (and he was of course gone) and was it ever overcrowded. We had difficult finding a place to sit and had sat on the gunwhale until some guy put down a wooden bench for us along the side. And we sat on that damn bench for 7 hrs on the river....wanna talk about excruciating agony??? Then the boat stopped at every village and picked people up along the way...and the space we had for our feet suddenly was disappearing and you felt like sardines in a can. Awful!!! NEVER AGAIN!!! And always trust your instincts...and double check!!!!
Did you think I was joking about the overcrowded boat???
We finally arrived in Pak Bang, a small overnight tourist town on the Mekong around 7:00 p.m. There wasn't any dock at all, the boat just pulled up to a sandy shoal with big rocks and everyone for themselves! I was trying to get off using the gangplank and some rather large German woman in a hurry pushed me, and I fell into about 2 ft of water with my bags. Then you trudge up this large sandy beach area and little kids are begging you to carry your bags to the top. Well, who am I not to suppor the local economy? So I divied up the 4 panniers, 2 to a kid, and also a guy begged me to carry my bike to the top as well. Again...it's the local economy! So we got to the top, I gave each kid 2 $1 bills and they were like falling all over themselves. I gave the guy who toted Big Red, $4 in 1's and he's got a grin as wide as the Grand Canyon...Cool!
The boat landing at Pak Bang
We got to the Guest House which was your basic guesthouse, no hot water, but First Class in my book...cause No Squat Toilet!!! We found a great restaurant for the evening, had our favorite, stir fried morning glory, chicken and rice and Beerlao!!
I had told Colin that as the boat was supposed to leave at 9 that I'd like to be at the boat around 7-7:30 so we could get the bikes loaded and find a decent seat. We ate at the same restaurant in the morning and had these delicious thick bannana pancakes...yummy! It was interesting as we got up and moving around about 6:30 (long after the cocks were crowing!) and waiting there for me, were the 2 little kids and the guy who had hauled my bags and bike from the landing. I told them to meet me at 7:30 at the top of the landing (which they did). We got the bikes aboard and a decent seat on the boat, only to lose out on that (again) when the boat became seriously overloaded with people the captain kept picking up along the way. I am not exaggerating (which i do sometimes admit to doing)...the engine actually started overheating and they must of shut it down and we just merrily went with the current till they got it running again.
Our boat....am I exaggerating??
We kept asking her to play Cumbaya......
One of the coolest parts of this trip (which really was pretty bad) was seeing all the little kids along the shore whenever we put in to pick people up...such big grins and they would wave and say Sabaidee...(hello in Lao)
Two more t'shirts gone! I wish I'd had a couple hundred!
We finally arrived in Luang Prabang just about sunset........
Sunset over the Mekong.........
We got the bikes unloaded (in the dark), packed up the panniers and rode off into the sunset and Luang Prabang to look for a guest house. It's always a hoot us looking for a guest house when we arrive anywhere, cause we have no friggn idea where the hell we're going and we're looking for a place to sleep! Ha! After about an hour and a half (everything was full), we finally found a great place (another Hyatt....no SQUAT TOILET!!) with hot water and only $10 a night. We booked three nights..........
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