πŸ‡±πŸ‡¦ Laos, Part 1: the slow boat and Luang Prabang πŸ‡±πŸ‡¦

Note: prices are for 2 adults with baggage
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FromToModeDurationCost
πŸ‡ΉπŸ‡­ Chiang Khong
πŸ‡±πŸ‡¦ Luang Prabang
LongBoat30:00Β£19.63

The journey to Luang Prabang

Woe be the traveler who Googles how to get from Chiang Khong (North Thailand) to Luang Prabang (Laos) by the slow boat. You’ll be met with scores of contradictory and anxiety inducing information about the trip.

It’s a 2 day journey down the Mekong river, and is absolutely beautiful: unless you end up in the engine room.

It’s the most popular way for backpackers to enter Laos from Thailand, and there is no apparent limit on the number of tickets they’ll sell for a day. And it’s always full to the brim.

The front of the boat is reserved for locals to commute, with the remaining (majority) of the boat being for tourists.

The last tourists to board the boat will end up having to travel in the engine room, which:

  • Is extremely noisy
  • Has lots of engine fumes (obviously), but also is the only place on the boat that people are allowed to smoke

So the stakes are high :police_car_light:.

Across the Thai - Laos border

The first part of the plan to avoid that fate felt like a military endeavour, but worked:

  • The day before, we caught a local bus to a town (Chiang Khong) on the border of Laos.
    • We were travelling with 2 monks :bald_person: :bald_person: and 2 chickens 🐔 🐔
  • The next morning, we woke at 6:45AM for an 11AM crossing - despite being on the border
    • We worked out that this way we could beat people traveling from Chiang Rai across the border, and get on the boat earlyish

We flagged down a tuk tuk, and scooted across to the border pretty pronto. Leaving Thailand was trivial. We then paid for a 30 second coach trip across the Thailand - Laos friendship bridge (effectively a tourist tax) to get to the Laos border.

In Laos

This was where the competition got real. It appeared we had narrowly made the first bridge crossing of the day. And we were the last on the coach, so first to get off. We had a chance of avoiding the engine room, but didn’t want to rest on our laurels.

The challenges now were that everybody on the coach had to:

  • Obtain enough local currency to pay for the visa, tuk tuk to the pier and boat journey
    • It took a while to gain confidence that yes we did want to withdraw 2 Million Kip, and no that wouldn’t take us massively into the red
  • Fill in a Laos visa application form
  • Obtain a visa
  • Get to the pier
  • Get on the boat

Everybody on the coach was well aware that they could end up in the engine room if they dilly dalleyed, so it felt a bit like The Hunger Games.

First day on the boat

Thankfully we were ruthlessly efficient, and were among the first to get on the coveted boat. The only problem was: the numbers on our tickets were larger than any paper numbers placed on any seat 😱 😱 😱

When we first asked the boat crew, they explained that we should go in the engine room 🤦 😱 😠 Luckily we avoided this. It quickly became apparent that lots of early arrivers also had tickets with too high a number, and also had no desire to travel in the engine room when they’d got there early to secure a good seat. There may have been a team effort to discard/rearrange some paper numbers so that trust was lost in the system.

(the seats are ripped out from transit vans, and not secured to the floor at all 😂)

Phew, we thought we’d struck gold. Then 9 brits sat opposite us with a crate of Beerlao, and a few half empty bottles of vodka and whisky. They were annoying, but not as bad as we initially predicted they may be.

We cruised down the Mekong for about 6 hours before reaching Pak Beng, a small village where everybody was to stay overnight.

We checked into our hostel, and had a really nice dinner at a local restaurant - costing Β£9 for 2 mains and 2 beers (turns out this is quite expensive for Laos!).

Second day on the boat

The anxiety hadn’t quite ended as we wished to:

  • Avoid the engine room for the second part of the trip
    • Having now verified that blogs weren’t exaggerating
  • Avoid the rowdy brits

So we headed down to the pier 1hr30 before we were due to depart. We weren’t the only people with that agenda, but managed to claim some great seats. It turned out there were multiple boats on the second leg of the trip, and the rowdy brits were too late to get onto our one 💪

It was an 8 hour journey on this day, but it didn’t drag.

A big highlight was that whenever we passed a village/town along the Mekong, groups of children and parents would often come to the bank to give a wave :grinning_face:

It seemed our boat also doubled as the Laoation equivalent of Yodel, with parcels and livestock frequently being on/off boarded to the shoreline.

We were always on alert for elephants 🐘 bathing in the river, but unfortunately didn’t get lucky.

All in all, very much worth the logistical stresses. It was a journey that was a destination in itself, and we might be among the last who are able to do it. Active construction of hydropower dams is underway on the Mekong, it’s likely that it will cause enough disruption to make this route infeasible.

The above photo is from later in our trip, but shows what the complete dams will look like. Personal opinions are mixed:

  • It’s awesome that green energy is being generated
  • But a popular route for commuting and trade will be disrupted
  • There will be an impact on fishing - a big source of some local’s income
  • Water levels around villages will be affected, possibly causing flooding

:thinking_face: :thinking_face: :thinking_face:

Luang Prabang

Run and bamboo bridge

We were really knackered when we finally got to Luang Prabang. We felt exhausted, despite being sat down for 2 days straight.

We had a big lie-in the next morning. But then made up for it as Laura was very keen to go for a run, as we noticed there were some pavements (which are like hen’s teeth in Southeast Asia).

It was well over 30Β°C, and very humid. All in all, a fun run though and a great way to see a new place - once you got used to the sensation of running through bathwater.

Afterwards, we walked across a bamboo bridge that we ran past:

There was a small toll, as when the rainy season comes each year the Nam Khan’s currents wash the bridge away and it has to be rebuilt. It was fun to walk across. We found a bar and post-run-post-slow-boat-survival treated ourselves to 5 cocktails and a beer for the grand total of Β£9.81 😱

Night Market

We ate here every night in Luang Prabang, and it was one of the highlights of the town.

It’s in a big square in the center of Luang Prabang. There are 20ish permanent vendors, and probably twice as many stalls.

The food all looks and smells incredible, and it’s very cheap. A starter, 2 mains and 2 beers comes to a fiver.

You place your order, and are given a number with a design that corresponds to a vendor. You then try to find a table in the center. There are hundreds of 4 person tables, but it’s so popular with both locals and tourists that you’d be very lucky to find an empty one. More often than not you’ll have to ask to join another person’s table, and that makes for a great atmosphere as everybody gets chatting.

Kuang Si Waterfall

We did a short daytrip from Luang Prabang to a breathtaking waterfall.

From the entrance, you have to walk through a bear sancturary. We’re not ones to enjoy seeing animals in captivity. But it really did seem like one of the better ones: there were only a few bears, and they were in very large enclosures. They’d been rescued from poachers, looked healthy/happy, and tourists were kept quite far away.

The main event was a ramble up a cracking waterfall.

Laura was brave enough to dive in, I wasn’t.

What’s next?

Phwoar, that was a fair bit to cover and only a slither of what we got up to in Laos. Join next time for:

  • We made some friends 💪
  • Hiking and accomdation mishaps in Vang Vieng
  • A 5am rise to see a monk ceremony
  • Hikes and adventures in the mountains to the north