We arrived in a rather non-descript one street town called Pak Beng, Laos after a 6 hour boat journey. The town basically sprang up to support the travellers that choose the Chiang Kong river route crossing into Laos.

One of the “must things to do” is to travel by longboat on the Mekong River. During the journey, the boat was definitely overcrowded with people having to sit on the floor. Never again will we complain about Ryanair and Easyjet seats!

Looking out, we passed some water buffalos, kids swimming in the river, villages and large mountains. The views were fantastic but the river was very dirty. The boat had cold drinks and crisps on board, just as well as Lisa didn’t fancy eating a pack lunch consisting of egg and rice......that old favourite!

When the boat pulled in to Pak Beng, we were accosted by young insistent kids offering to assist us with our luggage. We didn’t want to use them so carried our luggage up a 45 degree hill to the town. There isn’t a pier at Pak Beng, so you are expected to walk up a dangerous uneven rock surface with half your wardrobe packed into the rucksack. Incredibly difficult if you were old or were wearing flip flops. Impossible if you were both.

We were told that Pak Beng is a fairly bland place.........an understatement if ever there was one. There have been reports of theft from guest houses and hard drugs. It has only recently been dragged out of poverty. It now has fridges and electricity........give it another hundred years and they may think about a pier!!

We stayed in the Monsavanh Guest House for just the 1 night....thank God.

We found an Indian restaurant opposite our guest house and decided to go there for dinner as there didn’t appear to be many restaurants. We had a look at the kitchen before we ordered our meal. The food wasn’t that great, but at least we ate.......so did the mosquitoes.....more bites on our legs. After this, we decided to go back to the room for a sleep. We didn’t realise it was only 8:30pm. The village made us feel uncomfortable so didn’t want to be hanging around.

We left the guest house early, at 7:45am to be precise, as we wanted to get the cushioned recliner seats on the boat. The boat left at 9am (which turned out to be 10am). There were only 16 of the comfy seats on this boat and we managed to get two......oh yes! The captain and his staff of the boat were loading more and more passengers onto the boat with all their luggage. We felt that the boat was going to sink as we were so far into the water.......at one stage we had to double check that we hadn’t boarded a submarine as we were so low in the water. Mark had to put his foot down and tell them “no more, no more”. We read in our book that you have to speak up about this as they will crowd the boats to the extent that they capsize.......that’s good business sense!!!

So the next adventure began with an 8 hour journey to Luang Prabang, Laos