Return of The Boat Feeling
Tuesday, 28 December 2004
Oh yes! We are in a whole new country after a slightly painful 2 day boat trip along the Mekong to Luang Prabag in Laos. They call it "The Slow Boat To Luang Prabang" which sounds quite romantic don't it? well, it wasn't quite. The boat trip down the Mekong was quite amazing scenery-wise. Comfort-wise, it was quite literally less than comf (TM Andy Somerville).
We started off in by bussing it to Chian Khong in Thailand which sits along the bank of the Mekong. It just a small town with ugly buildings (as is the Thai way) but you can catch ferries across the river to Huay Xai in Lao. We spend the night here in a little bamboo shed before going over to catch the slow boat in the morning. Strangely, a tuk tuk driver turned up at our guesthouse in the morning to give us a lift to the pier. Couldn't imagine how he knew we were staying there. Freeky shit.
After alot of queuing and excellent bruerocracy (I have no idea how to spell this word) we got to Lao and onto a narrow boat style barge, but without any of the comfort items, with several million other tourists, locals, chickens, fish and other spelly organisms. The leg room was bad. Very bad. Fenn would have been in tears. I had a Japanese bloke in between my legs. He didn't like that. Nor did I. And so we sat for 8 hours (including a 2 hour fucking about time at the pier) until we ended up at some crazy hick backwater called Pak Beng where the locals repeatedly tried to sell us Opium.
In the morning it was back on the boat for some more legs akimbo fun but, I have to admit, not as cramped as the previous day. This enabled me to have a good look at the scenery while having an extensive recap of Old Dirty Bastard's back catalogue in honour of his recent untimely death. Catherine's music device had run out of juice however so she ended up enduring a six hour blast of utter shite from a big arse noise family of aussies with no sense of personal space. Apparently, Melbourne is the cultural epicentre of Australia, it has a wonderful musical called The Lion King....how's about that eh? Amazin.
I can't really hope to describe the scenery (as obviously, we are both only good at moaing about things) but I have to say it was some of the best I've ever seen. Stepped sandy river banks, big jutting rocks and sheer cliffs, vast amounts of untouched jungle, waterfalls and tiny fishing villages complete with Lao Dirty Children (TM). There were some Japanese people with bazooka sized cameras leaping around the boat trying to take pictures of them like it was National Geographic. I find alot of travellers really embarassing in that way. You can't treat people like animals in some kind of safari park...
We met a great Japanese dude who fed us multivitamins which were most neccesary and told us lots of interesting stuff about religion in Japan. Also, a mangled looking aged hippy brit bloke was entertaining people with his light up fake thumbs (ohhhhh yes!!!!!). Apparently, he makes his living selling them. They are all the rage he says. He did some kind of weird thing with them which I didn't understand. It looks better at night he said....
And...eventually we ended up at Luang Prabang which is a very cool looking place. Its got a grate big jungle the middle with temples and shit. They have baguettes also. Rock on.
This bring us to now. We both have the boat feeling. I hate the boat feeling.
