The Journey of epic proportions began in Pai at 8pm on Thursday night. We did not arrive at our destination, Luang Prabang in Laos, until 6pm on Saturday. It all began with a horrendously windy minibus trip through the night to the border of Thailand and Laos at Chiang Khong. We were dropped off at 5am at a suspect looking guesthouse named "Boom House" where we were quickly acquainted with Mr Boom himself (or Ting Tong Two as he said his nickname was). He wasted no time in giving out nicknames himself, he thought he was hilarious when nicknaming Katie "Ms Watermelons"! Great! exactly what one wants at 5am after an all night journey. After eventually agreeing to sign up to Mr Boom's Mekong trip into Laos we were given breakfast and sheparded into the car to the border.
Here the fun really started. With our backpacks on and all our other stuff we were herded across a narrow wooden plank onto a long boat and taken across the border. Disembarkation was as difficult as gettng on, with only a rickety plank, followed by a steep uphill climb to immigration. Once through immigration (which involved more stamps than we would have thought humanly possible!) we were slightly worried about the character of the Laos people as all those we had encountered so far seemed pretty grumpy. Once our bags had been slung onto the roof of the pick-up truck we were all crowded into the back and taken to our boat.
W e were aware that the boat was a 'slow' boat and that it wasn't exactly going to be comfortable but we were not prepared for the narrow wooden benches and overcrowding that occured on the boat. Nevertheless, the first day passed relatively quickly with breathtaking views of the Mekong and we arrived in the evening at a village called Pak Beng where we were to spend the night before cathcing the boat again the next morning.
The guesthouse was pretty standard, it had great views from the restaurant and we had a nice evening chatting to people from our boat and being questioned repeatedly by a waiter-cum-drug dealer as to whether we wanted to go with him for opium or have some 'happy pancakes'!
Day two was an experience in itself. Firstly, although there were the same amount of people, the boat was half the size it had been the day before and we thought it was crowded then! To make matters worse, there was also a hoarde of locals taking up the front of the boat where we were unfortunately positioned on our hard narrow bench.Did however prove to be our first true Laos experience.
The Lao people seemed to have brought everything except the kitchen sink - literally they had all their belongings with them on the boat including live chickens, raw fish and crates of Lychees! Everytime we stopped (which we did pretty frequently) we hoped people might get off but instead we seemed to get an influx of yet more stuff and people.
The company up our end of the boat consisted of a family, complete with Grandma and baby. Mum seemed to make herself comfy, stretching out over two seats whilst the rest of us couldnt find space for our feet, whilst Grandma tossed the poor baby around as a party trick and dad was consistently nonplussed. There were also a motly crowd of potential market sellers, including a woman who sold lychee and had no concept of personal space, happily treading on our toes and sitting on our laps! The two drunk men who kept passing round the 'Beer Lao' whilst eating their sticky rice and chicken head and feet from a bag. Lastly, we had the greasy, grey pony-tailed old Finnish Man and FOB (Fresh Of The Boat) younger Thai woman who he introduced as his girlfriend, later stating that he had only been in Thailand for two weeks. This was bad, but the continuous PDAs (Public Displays of Affection) and peeling off of his dead skin was sickening. Although intrigued by the Lao culture for a while, the novelty quicky wore off and we started noticing our numb bums and wishing we were on solid ground.
Finally, only an hour behind schedule and 44hours since setting off, we arrived at Luang Prabang, only to set off once again in search of guesthouses.