... So here I am in the lovely city of Luang Probang... I'm here to regail you with tales of my two and a half day journey here... it might be a bit of a struggle though as the keyboard on the hostel computer is so well used that all the letters have faded, so I need to type using my memory of the old qwerty keyboard (so far so good... there is another computer, but the 'n' is broken on that keyboard!).
... My first impression of Laos is quite positive... it kind of strikes me as a ferrile version of Thailand... a rough diamond... a jack-the-lad! ... but anyway... the boat...
... (Jesus some of the people here are getting on my metaphorical tits (I'm now in one of my lone ranger spells where I pretty much fly solo until lonliness gets the better of me and I become social again)... it's clear a group has formed here and it seems that the group is as impenetrable as a Yale-brand chastity belt (sorry!)... You're forced to sit on the periphery while I listen to a guy trying to jam to music with a harmonica he can't play and listen to a ginger kid (although there is nothing wrong with that in itself) chatting up a dutch girl by talking what can be only described as bullshit (describing Johanna Newsome as the true voice of American folk, Tom Waits as the direction jazz should have taken, and discussing the existentialism of society... yawn!)... but please alert me if I'm being a hypocrite, as that is a common occurrence... anyway, after the claustrophobia of the boat I think these sentiments might just be a reaction to wanting a bit of downtime)...
... so, the boat... To get from Pai to Laos I decided to take a slow boat up the Mekong river to the city of Luang Prabang... we left Pai at 8pm and arrived at a Thai border town at 3.30am... slept in a shithole til 7am (literally, there was petrified cat shit on one of the sofas!)... then we were driven on the back of a pickup truck to the boarder (I say we but I was really alone, just a mini-bus of us from the same tour agent in Pai... I got to know a few of them on the boat, but more about this later)... I already had my Laos visa so just had to wait for the others in the group to get theirs on arrival and then we set out for the boat...
Humm, I've become a bit board with this writing just now... I need to work on my concentration... also, having the football highlights in the corner of my vision is not helping... we spent two days on the slow boat going down the Mekong with an overnight stop at some place I can't be bothered to look up the name of... it's called the slow boat for obvious reasons, there was an alternative of a 6 hour speed boat but I've heard that you're left shaking for days from the experience if you don't end up strewn on rocks... I'd heard horror stories about the state of the boat... about cramped conditions and basically having a horrible time... as I waited for the bus from Pai to the Boarder, some smug Dutch C-word kept saying how bad he'd heard the boat was and how glad he was to be catching the bus... on and on and on... I wanted to say something but only I would look bad then... why put fear into other people? Just to try and justify your own decisions? (There is probably a tad of bitterness here and a fact that I wasn't sure of my own decision to take the boat after all the stories I'd heard)... but the boat was beautiful if a bit long (6 hours on day one and 9 on day two)... it wasn't rocky and the first day there was plenty of space to sit and read and drink and be merry (some folk got a little over merry on the first day, polishing off bottles of whisky etc (all travellers)... needless to say, they were less merry the next day)... the second day was more cramped but not ridiculously so... a mix of my currently (slightly;) grumpy mood and the fact that fellow travellers seemed a little bit try-hard (although maybe I wasn't trying enough) led to a little bit of frustration until I finally lost myself in my book... there were some cool people though who I had a nice little chat with without having to go too deep into the boring rigmarole of listing the countries I've visited, my age, what I've been doing with my life, what are my plans for the future... but my patience was tested when an Irishman from Skilgow mistook a question of, 'What music do you like?' with 'List every band you've ever heard of.' (and he didn't even mention the Smiths!)... I felt a little uncomfortable in the place where we spent the night stop... it seems like everyone is a drug dealer there... I got offered dope with my room, with my meal, offered a happy (read, opium) pancake... but to be fair, you say no once and they leave you alone... In Luang Prabang it's less of a problem although I did get offered some when walking around this morning... a tuk tuk driver smiled and asked, 'tuk-tuk?', 'no, thanks'... then his face immediately changed to intense seriousness as he asked, 'Marijuana?' with a sneer which screamed terrible John Wayne impression... but a simple 'no' sufficed (that's all you need to do kids, just say no!)...
The scenery from the boat was spectacular, palm-treed and lush and green... random beaches with wild-buffalo... occasional stops in the middle of nowhere to let locals off or to allow local children on to sell souvenirs, bananas, or even beer (an 8 year old selling 2 beers for 100 baht... I couldn't tell if I was outraged with the kids selling booze or just the price!)... the river was strewn with rocks all over... a driver needs to be alert and skilled to stop crashing into rocks or to avoid swaying too much in the whirlpools along the river... local families even sat on the boats roof on the crowded second day. ... the driver was skilled and managed to steer us into the smallest possible collision with rocks when the engine failed at one point (everyone started to panic a little bit (especially the inebriated ones) but they soon had the old girl moving again:)...
... O might not choose to take the slow boat again... but I'm very glad I took it:) ... I now need to plan my days in Laos... I might go to the north to trek for a day or two before heading to that boozy tubing place to watch the human zoo of apocalypticly drunk humans teetering on the boarder between euphoria and oblivion... and then maybe go to the capital before catching a flight or 24 hour bus to Hanoi in Vietnam... these are all rough plans... today I just acquaint myself with this beautiful city as well as relax and read and drink and eat... then tomorrow maybe I'll visit the local waterfall and have a swim:)
... OK, keep well all... I hope I'm not boring you all too much with this blog:)
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