river – Slow boat to Laos

We arrived in Luang Prabang yesterday afternoon after our 2-day Slow Boat trip.

We started in Huay Xai on the Mekong River, where we spent a night at the Saibaydee Guesthouse after getting a bus across the border from Chiang Rai. The very helpful host at the guesthouse organised our boat tickets for us and got us seats near the front of the boat. The very noisy 6-cylinder truck engine which powers the boat is towards the back, so we were keen to be as far away from that as possible! There’s also a snack bar towards the back, and smokers head to the captain’s living quarters behind the engine.

It absolutely poured with rain while we were in Huay Xai. I changed some Thai baht into Laos kip at one of the local banks and we ended up waiting on their front verandah for about 30 minutes until the torrential rain eased up. And then it rained all night. We were pretty lucky that it didn’t rain very much while we were on the boat, especially as there was a leak in the boat’s roof that dripped onto my shoulder when it did rain. Not to worry, the weather was warm and my shirt dried quickly. I had taken the precaution of wearing my lightest clothes in case they got wet, but I did stay mostly dry. I also bought a raincoat from a local seller in Huay Xai – it’s absolutely huge on me and I won’t be sad if I never get to wear it, but it would keep me dry if I need it to.

On our first day of ‘slow boating’, we spent about 5 hours on the boat, which left Huay Xai at 11.30 am and docked at Pakbeng at around 4.30 pm. Most of our fellow passengers were backpackers much younger than us, with about 20 locals and their assorted bags, bundles and boxes of stuff. We made a couple of stops along the way, but most of the passengers got off at Pakbeng. There was a bit of a scrum at the boat dock amongst locals offering various levels of accommodation. We had booked a room at the BKC Villas through Agoda and the owner met us and other guests and took us the 500m up the hill in his tuk-tuk. We were given a welcome drink (butterfly pea, lime juice, sugar & water – delicious!) in the reception area and allocated to our rooms. Ours was on the top floor and had a lovely view over the river. We would have been happy to spend an extra night there if we’d been able to work out how to break up the journey. We also ate dinner and breakfast there and enjoyed both very much. Watching a couple of elephants having their morning bath on the other side of the river while we had breakfast on the deck was a bonus!

On the second day we were on a different boat and there were heaps more locals with heaps more stuff – 2 motorbikes on the front of the boat, loads of 20 litre drums on the roof, bags and bags of rambutan, longan and other fruit, assorted other bags and people everywhere! The boat ended up very full and to be honest, if there had been any problems, it would have been an absolute disaster. But as I kept reminding myself and Greg, those boats are also the captains’ and their families’ homes, so it’s in their interest to keep them running well and not sink them.

The scenery along the Mekong was spectacular. Greg’s photos and videos will tell the story better than I ever could. We loved doing the trip as we got to see part of Laos that is only visible from the river – small villages with no road access, forests of majestic teak trees and of course the mighty Mekong River itself.

The seats on both boats were originally from passenger minivans. They were not very comfortable and both of us had sore backs after sitting in them for a couple of days, but I would much rather sit in one on a boat where I can get up and move around, than be squashed in a minivan travelling the 474kms by road from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang. I haven’t been able to find out how far the boat trip is, I think it’s about 300-350kms.

Buying the tickets in Chiang Rai for Huay Xai

Crossing the Mekong from Thailand to Laos

Finally we are millionaires. 1 million Laos Kip (about $160 AUD)

Our ride to Huay Xai after arriving at the bus depot

Awaiting for the 5 other people (with their bags) to get in

Working our way down the steep muddy bank to our slow boat

The seats are ex van seats bolted to pieces of wood just sitting on the deck

Lots of debris in the Mekong, that had to be dodged by the boat captain

Bamboo fences at PakBeng, we saw many of these along the Mekong

the view from our room at the BKC at PakBeng, at the end of the first day of the slow boat

During the journey to Luang Prabang we pickup about 50 more passengers (and drop some off)

Every morning we have breakfast at the hotel’s ground floor cafe. It is open to the street and my favourite table is by the low window boxes that line the edge of the cafe by the road. There’s a Thai eggplant growing there, and I like to check the progress of the fruit. The first morning we ate there, it had one fruit on it. Now there are 5 and they are growing fast!

There are at least 2 dozen street food stalls in our street, mostly up the Sukhumvit end. We haven’t tried any of them yet, but I’ve picked out a couple that I want to eat at … sometime when I’m not so full of all the other food we’ve been eating. There’s the Thai omelet on rice stall and the mushroom soup stall. The omelet stall doesn’t seem to keep long hours, but the mushroom soup lady works hard. We see her in the mornings, and one night she was wheeling her cart home when we were walking back to the hotel at around 8.30pm.

Yesterday we took Liam’s advice and caught an Orange flag ferry up the river to Nothaburi. We got a Grab car to take us to Saphan Taksin Pier. The Skytrain also goes there, but we wanted to see what it was like driving there. The roads were crowded and mostly slow, but our driver was excellent. When we got to the pier, a man tried to send us to the tourist boats, a reasonable assumption I guess, then pointed us in the right direction when Greg told him we just wanted to catch the ferry. There’s a huge assortment of river craft, ranging from very upmarket tourist cruise boats, hop-on-hop-off tourist boats, passenger ferries and ferries that just go across the river. The one we took went between Saphan Taksin Pier and Nonthaburi and it was packed full of locals and tourists but by the time we reached Nonthaburi it was just about empty. Most tourists got off at the Grand Palace or one of the temples along the way.

When we got off the ferry, we saw lots of stalls selling brightly coloured versions of the packing beads we call ‘ghost poo’, which we use when we pack boxes to send to customers. I bought the smallest pack just before we caught the ferry back to Bkk, it cost about 40c and after I’d handed my money over I said to the seller ‘Now, tell me what it is’. His reply – ‘Fish food’. Ha! It was worth the 40c for the laugh and the photo. We took a photo of it when we were sitting on the ferry and I watched a Thai guy looking at me. I’m sure he was waiting for me to start eating it! I left it on the ferry.

Nonthaburi has a large food market, lots of shops and lots of street stalls lining the footpaths. And lots of places to eat, of course. We found a little cafe that sold 6 different dishes – Greg had pork with rice, I had noodle soup, total cost $3. We wandered through the food market and found more things to eat – rice crispy biscuit things with caramel on top, little bananas on skewers cooked on a char-grill and multi-coloured dumplings – orange / carrot, yellow / pumpkin, green / spinach, purple / taro. I ate them so quickly I forgot to get a photo! The ferry back was less crowded & we got seats on what turned out to be the splashy side of the boat, but we dried quickly. The ferry trip took about an hour each way. We caught the Skytrain back to the stop near the hotel and rested up before dinner.

There’s a Korean shopping mall on the corner of Sukhumvit and Soi 12. Lots of BBQ and other restaurants, bars, shops and a dessert cafe. We had Korean barbecue at Jang Won, a 4-storey place that had private rooms on a couple of floors, but as there were only 2 of us we just got a table on the 4th floor. What feast! We ordered pork slices and beef bulgogi, which came with about a dozen little dishes of kim chi, pickled onions, sauces and other things. The pork slices came first, on a hotplate on a gas stove. The wait-staff were very attentive and at one point took the tongs away from me because apparently I wasn’t cooking the meat properly, or something. When we’d finished the pork, they took that hotplate and stove away and brought the bulgogi on different kind of hotplate on a stove. And then just left us to it, but this time we didn’t know what to do! We waited for someone to come back, but no one did, and eventually the Korean guy at the next table told us to stir it up and eat it before it burnt!

It was all delicious and cost a total of about $30. And then even though we really had eaten enough, we went to the dessert place and ordered 2 desserts which were huge! We should have shared one, and realised that that is what most people do after we’d sat down and looked at what people at other tables were doing. There was a group of 5 girls next to us sharing one dessert and when Greg went to collect ours, the young woman at the counter asked ‘how many people?’. We did manage to eat them both, though.

Toast is a ‘thing’ here – there are street food stalls that sell savoury and sweet fillings on thick pieces of toasted bread. The 2 desserts we had were both toast-based. 3 thick slices of toasted bread which are then assembled in a tower, covered or sprinkled with toppings and then cut into small squares. I commented to Greg that those desserts would have to be about as far away as possible from the sourdough bread I bake at home.

Tag: river

Meandering down the Mekong River

A day on the river