Three Days Getting to Laos

Hello again dear reader/What took you so long first timers??

So, we're off on a magical adventure to Laos (that's pronouced without the 's' and don't let anyone tell you different)! Yay for us! Who's us this time round? There's me (clearly), Duncan, the pool playing Englishman, Chris the Virus Hunter, from Oxford, and Matt from London who I'm sure does something.

There were a few sore heads the morning we left, but some breakfast, water and fizzy drinks sorted out the worst of that, then about 11 we piled into a minibus and off we went, lickety-split on a 6 our drive to Chiang Khong, the Thai side of the Mekong, which we would cross to enter Laos before heading down to Luang Prabang.

So technically it only took 6 hours and a ferry to get to Laos, but I hate technically.

On the bus, I met a bloke, bout 30, from Navan, called Curry (first name Mark) and his girlfriend - whose name we still don't know. There was also Ash and April, another couple - lots of couples out here in South East Asia for some reason. They were all going the same direction as us which was pretty cool. Meant that there were other people to chat to and laugh at stuff with, so that was grand.

There were two stops along the way, which was not really very many but meant we got there pretty "quick". I just watched some stuff on my laptop and read China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, which I couldn't recommend more. It's awesome!

We arrived in Chiang Khong after dark (but dark is about 6 here) at our overnight accommodation, figuring it'd be a bit of a shithole, but once again Noom had come through for us. He organised the entire trip except the night's bed in Pak Beng in Laos which we sorted in Chiang Khong. Anyway, this is the place -

We had a few beers and watched Book of Eli in the "movie room" which seemed to me to be the same room as reception and the restaurant. Went to bed about 11 or so, read some more.

When we arrived we gave the desk clerk our passports and filled out the visa form with him, so that he could go over early in the morning and get them pre-processed for us so we wouldn't have to queue, which was handy.

I barely made it up on time for a fairly dodgy breakfast and then we were off for the border. We get a tiny kayak thing over, basically, which was just hilarious with our giant rucksacks. Then there was a five minute period of standing after which we were called up to pay and given out now visa-ed passports back. After that we walked up to a man in a shiny police hat, who stamped our passports and that was that for Laos "immigration".

Funny thing was though, while we were there I ran into Steff (see Pai blog) and James, who I met there for about an hour. They were heading for the same Slow Boat as us, because the world is so small!

Before getting to the boat we were dropped at the office of the "tour" company, where they attempted sell us kip (Laos currency) at extortionate rates, as well as food, drinks and even some cannabis - welcome to Laos.

The German girls, Anna and Josefin, had warned me to get a cushion for the slow boat, and I had warned everyone else, so we had one and fuck me was it worth the euro! The benches belong in a slave galley! I think I'd have died without the cushion.

When we finally arrived in Pak Beng on the night of their annual end of rain season full moon festival, so it was fairly busy. Some guy showed us how to get to our guesthouse so we figured he worked there, but actually he was just wanted to sell us drugs - weed, opium or yaba. So we kicked him out and he went next door to Chris and Matt. Matt had just managed to break the tap in the bathroom, so there was waterflying everywhere, and again they think this guy works for the guesthouse, so they tell him and ask him to fix it, but he just wants to sell them drugs, which goes nowhere so he eventually leaves - but they think he's gone to get tools to fix the sink. About ten minutes later I'm over there and we all realise he doesn't even work in the place and there's no one coming to fix the tap.

After we got it all sorted, we had dinner, went and watched the festival, which was like Bagdad at night! See video. There were ten-year olds fling fireworks in random directions, most of which seem to blow up near us white people! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YFJYOhqYyE

Headed for the bar - the "one only bar in town", Hive bar, where we met Nok, who we were all jut a tiny little bit in love with I reckon. She let us play our own music off her iPod, so we had Metallica, the Chillis and stuff blaring. Nok's 23 and (supposedly single), which is basically weird for her since most of her peer-group got married at 17 and have babies. She's travelled to Thailand and around Laos a few times too, which is also pretty weird apparently.

There's a general curfew in Laos, everyone has to be in their place of resisdence by about 11:30 . . . so at about 11, Nok locked us in the bar, and the party continued. Clearly.

I even got to teach Nok how to do "devil horns". As this picture clearly demonstrates.

Around half-two we stumbled out, probably paying for to much and fell back to the hostel, more or less totally wrecked, and having to be up for a boat that was leaving at 9. We went from party to this . . .

The boat was smaller than the one the day before and there was just as many people, but eventually a load got off and they put on a second boat. Otherwise we'd have died, quite literally. We were in a bad way that morning. We just crashed on the floor and lay there, slept or read or put on head phones and felt cramped, sick and bitter for several hours.

To make matters worse, the boat was listing heavily to one side, to the point where we had to pick up balast bags at the next stop just to even out the weight so we didn't tip. Yeah, awesome.

After about 5 hours of this we perked up slightly and began a game of shithead, international rules - basically a combination of various different rules and trick cards from many counties. That nicely killed the last two hours and may possibly be the reason no one totally freaked out and had to be sedated.

Then, blessedly, we arrived, we pull into port, grabbed our bags and jumped off that boat like the devil was coming for it and headed for SpicyLaos! Jesus were we ever happily to stumble into that place and see chairs and beds and bottles of ice cold water!

I'm not saying don't travel that way, because it was fun, cheap and easy and the views were just amazing, and I'm not saying don't go visit Nok in Hive bar, but I am saying, don't drink too much! You'll regret it!!

Talk soon guys,
Shane.