Off On Our Next Adventure

A Local Bus Experience

We arrived at the Chiang Rai bus station around midday, leaving us plenty of time to try and find a few more US dollars (rare as hens’ teeth in this part of the world) from the local currency exchange places, and pay a final visit to the beloved 7-Eleven for a ham and cheese toasted sandwich. Anna also took it upon herself to use all her minion stamps (a type of discount coupon) towards buying a pack of grape Hi-Chews with her pocket money. Usually 20 baht, Anna was utterly delighted to discover that her combined minion stamps meant that she only had to pay 3 baht for her Hi-Chews!

While eating our toasties at the bus station, we were approached by a taxi driver wanting to transport us to the border for a pretty sum, however, with the 1pm local bus costing only 70 baht each, we stuck with the bus, even though it looked a little rustic.

This bus would take us all the way to the turn-off to the Laos-Thailand Friendship Bridge IV, where a tuk tuk would take us the rest of the way.

We boarded the bus just before 1pm, having loaded all our bags on and reserved our seats half an hour earlier. The only air con was the open windows and several ceiling fans on the go the whole time. Leo drily remarked that it was good to see that some recycling was taking place in Thailand, because the bus had clearly seen decades of service already.

Sure enough, there was peeling paint on the ceiling, and once the bus started moving, we were somewhat surprised to see that the bus door was open and would remain so for the entire journey!

It was a beautiful, sunny afternoon, and we quite enjoyed looking out at the scenery on the way. So many beautiful shades of green! I think I will forever associate this bright green colour with Southeast Asia. This, and the lack of crowds in tourist spots, is one of the highlights of travelling during rainy season.

Crossing the Border to Laos

The Lao-Thai Friendship Bridge IV is situated just outside of Chiang Khong. The bus driver dropped the four of us off at the turn-off, where a waiting tuktuk took us the rest of the way. As we were disembarking the bus, a young couple of European backpackers said “Get the bus! Don’t get the boat! We’ve heard that the boat is awful.” We thanked them for the advice and double checked ourselves…were we mad for thinking we could manage the two day slow boat journey with two kids? Was it really that bad?

With this food for thought, we completed our exit from Thailand, which was very easy and straightforward. We were also given some sound last minute advice from the friendly Thai border officials. A bus was waiting to take us over the bridge for 20 baht each, and we enjoyed laying eyes on the Mekong River for the first time, as we crossed this watery border to Laos.

At the Laos border, we needed to fill in two forms per person and pay our visa fee of $41USD each. While I was laboriously filling in the forms in triplicate for the kids and I (I refuse to do Shaun’s for him), Shaun was faffing about, asking whether he could pay in kip (“and why not?”), or in Thai baht (“and how much please?”). Having only a few hundred precious US dollars on us, we were keen to hold onto them as long as possible. Once he’d finished his obsessive questioning, he then had the cheek to come over and tell me I’d provided too much detail on the immigration forms! I’ll leave it up to you to caption this photograph, as my colourful language at this moment is best not used in the blog!

Once completed, we handed over the completed forms with our passports at one window. After a few minutes, these were returned with beautiful looking Lao visas. The order was a bit odd, because we had to pay for them at a different window, after showing our unpaid for visas at yet another window in between. An interesting bureaucratic experience! Shaun had eventually worked out that we could use our remaining 1500 baht for one visa payment and then pay the rest in US dollars. Once this was done, we could step into Laos, and Leo led the way.

Huay Xay

A waiting tuktuk took us into Huay Xay, where we had booked into a super cheap guesthouse for $34NZD for all of us for the night, and where the slow boat would depart from the next day. The view of the Mekong from our window and the balcony upstairs was beautiful.

Having done heaps of research, we had learned that it was best to just buy the public boat ticket in person, rather than paying extra to book online. By now it was about 5.30pm and after we’d dumped our bags in our modest yet clean quadruple room, we walked down to the pier in the hope that someone would still be open and selling tickets, so we didn’t have to do it in the morning.

Fortunately for us, we found a shop with a sign that said it sold boat tickets. The woman fetched her brother, Mit, who spoke English and we enquired about whether we could buy tickets for all of us and somehow end up with a table on the boat as well. After a phone call to the captain of the boat that was departing the next morning, Mit said if we paid for an extra couple of seats plus a commission fee, they could arrange a table all the way to Luang Prabang. We knew a table was a key part of ensuring a successful journey with the kids so that we could play games, do some homeschooling and drawing to pass the time and be able to eat comfortably, as well as creating a bit more leg room. It was a great deal, especially considering the fact that the fancier “VIP” boats with tables cost $135USD per person, compared with the 400,000 LAK per person plus an extra million for the table (1 million kip is about $100NZD).

While Shaun was ironing out the finer details, I took Leo and Anna for a walk down to the pier, which was really just a road end that disappeared into the river. There was a gorgeous sunset. We saw the slow boats docked for the night and had a closer look to give the kids an idea of what to expect the next day.

The following morning, we woke up at 6am, packed the few things we’d taken out the night before, and the kids and I went in search of breakfast, and lunch for the journey. The bakery near the pier was deserted, however just up the road, a couple were selling khao jee pate, filled baguettes with pate, pork, herbs, and carrot for only 18000 kip each (about NZ$1.80). We bought four of these for the journey, since they were huge and would serve as a hearty brunch for us all.

We met up with Shaun, who had been collected from our guesthouse with all our bags, at Mit’s shop, where we were greeted by this care package they had put together for our journey of bananas, crisps and water. It was such a kind gesture.

Mit then escorted us to the boat  where we found a lovely table all set up between our seats.

After thanking Mit, we said our goodbyes and settled in for the journey to Pakbeng. On board, there was a toilet, as well as a ‘shop’ that sold pot noodles, a few snacks and drinks.

As the name suggests, this is a slow boat journey. However, we were heading downstream with the current, so what would be a seven hour journey in the dry season was only a six hour hour journey in rainy season, followed by another eight hours the next day.

The boat wasn’t completely full, so lots of the travellers had a couple of seats to stretch out. The seats were comfy old van seats and were mounted on movable wooden stands, so groups of young backpackers were able to move the seats around to face their friends.

It was fun getting to know the other travellers on board, and chatting about our journeys and home countries gave us lots of conversation to pass the time.

Throughout the journey, the scenery was beautiful, changing from farmland with a lot of cleared land nearer the border to beautiful lush jungle as we got further down the Mekong. It was very relaxing and peaceful watching cattle or water buffalo bathing on the riverbank, and the occasional fisherman at work.

It was also fascinating watching the river itself, which is full of varying currents and eddies. At this time of year, in early September, the Mekong is full from rainy season downpours, and while the current was swift, it had what I can only describe as a languid quality to it, as its flow seemed effortless and eternal. We had watched Sue Perkins’ documentary on the Mekong on Netflix a few months earlier, and I really got what she meant about how the Mekong is the lifeblood of the six countries if flows through…it just has that feeling…and it became our constant, familiar companion throughout our journey.

As we approached Pakbeng town, which was our overnight stop, we were all ready to get off the boat for the evening.

Our host picked us up with the other travellers staying at our accommodation and drove us five minutes up the road to her riverside guesthouse. It was clean, tidy, and comfortable with an amazing view of the Mekong.

That evening, Anna was missing home a little, so she decided to make a  countdown calendar of how many days until we go back to NZ. When working it out, we realized that we had exactly 90 days left.

We ate at the place next door to our accommodation for dinner and breakfast the next morning, and they also kindly made us baguettes for lunch, which we’d pre-ordered the night before.

After a good night’s sleep, we were ready to board the next boat at 8am the next day, finding two tables with seats on either side this time…it was very posh, and exactly the same set up as the fancier, more expensive boats. As we were boarding, the captain’s wife was at the door, greeting us and telling us to take off our shoes and put them in the plastic bags she was handing out. Once we got inside, we could see why, as this boat had beautiful wooden floors and was very clean. Clearly, this matriarch was very houseproud! When some young backpackers got on with their large box of Beer Laos and a bag of ice, she swiftly provided them with a large steel bowl to avoid her clean floor getting wet.

As we were pulling away, there was a group of people doing morning prayers with three monks on the riverside.

Anna got to work on building card houses and was very pleased to create this one until the rocking boat put an end to this activity. After that, it was time for some visual diary work for Anna, while I did some maths with Leo. I noticed while sitting next to Leo that a young local girl on board with her mother was looking wistfully at Anna’s pencils, so I invited her to sit by Anna and draw on some paper we found in Anna’s book. She shyly accepted, and it was lovely to see a wordless friendship blossom between her and Anna for the rest of the boat journey.

Meanwhile, Leo studiously got on with his maths problem solving, although while the first one worked out perfectly, the maths problem I made up didn’t work…lucky I don’t teach maths for a living! We’ll stick to the online resources from now on. You’ll notice that Leo is even dressed the part, wearing his Fergy PE uniform (which was accidentally brought with us at the bottom of his schoolbag, but has turned out to be the perfect attire for the climate over here!).

As we made our way further down the Mekong, we passed lots of other boats and local villages, stopping at some of these to pick up/drop off people. At one such stop, a group of three kids boarded the boat, sidling along the outside of the boat like a trio of cute little pirates, offering wristbands for sale for 10,000LAK each ($1NZ). Admiring their entrepreneurship, Shaun bought five, although at that moment, the captain’s wife started yelling at them to get off as the boat was pulling away. Suddenly, all three of them leapt off the boat in complete synchronization, and swam like mad to the safety of the river bank.

There was an audible gasp from those on board the boat as they witnessed this, and then a collective sigh of relief as the children made it safely to shore.

We then understood why the captain’s wife had sounded so cross, and we felt bad that we had encouraged this behaviour by buying some bracelets. We gave two away to Anna’s friend and her brother, and our kids kept the others.

The rest of the journey passed by quite quickly, and the scenery got even more beautiful as we got closer to Luang Prabang. We played a few of the games we had brought with us, like Rummikub and Yahtzee, read our books, listened to music, watched tv shows we had downloaded, and Leo had his Switch, once he’d finished his schoolwork of course.

By mid afternoon, everyone on board were just doing their own thing. There was a bit of fun and laughter going on down the back end of the boat. When Shaun went down to use the loo (this boat also had very clean toilets!), he noticed that the captain’s wife was getting on the Beer Laos with a couple of other women traveling on the boat, and they were very giggly. A well-deserved afternoon off after all her hard work!

The Slow Boat in Pictures by Anna

Around 4pm, we reached our destination at a nondescript jetty on the outskirts of the Luang Prabang, requiring us to climb a steep concrete staircase of about 100 steps. We puffed our way to the top, laden with our bags, already sweating in the intense late afternoon heat and humidity. It was a bit of a shock after the cooling breeze on the boat.

Anna farewelled her new friend, and we smiled and waved goodbye to her mum and brother. We also said goodbye to the fellow travellers who we’d befriended before jumping in the back of a tuktuk, which took us to our accommodation for 200,000kip (50,000 per person). The tuktuks in Laos were much bigger than the tuktuks in Thailand, and we could’ve easily fitted a couple more people in with us and our luggage, however it was just the four of us, setting off on our next adventure.