In the morning we
packed up, checked out and then walked up and down the road stocking
up on supplies for the boat – bananas, a banana cake and some
water. We then stopped in at quite a sophisticated little cafe across
the road from our guesthouse and had some pretty good coffees and
pastries for breakfast. In the light of day, we discovered that Pak
Beng is actually quite a sophisticated little village – obviously
the result of the large number of Western tourists that must
overnight there as they break the journey up and down the river.
It was now getting
on towards 8am, when the boat was due to leave, so we headed down to
the pier. As we waited for Kate to check which boat to get on, I
spotted a small elephant having a bath on a small beach on the other
side of the river as its handler watched on. We bought our tickets on
the boat – another 110,000 kip – and then we got under way. There
were fewer people on the boat today, among them a young British
couple who were essentially doing the reverse of our trip – they
started in New Zealand and would eventually do the trans-Siberian in
the other direction – and a pair of smelly hippies who
unfortunately chose to sit in front of Zoe and I, wafting their
unpleasant odours over us.
The trip up the
river was roughly the same as yesterday's, but with more
deforestation. Around lunch time, it started to rain quite heavily
and everyone ran around letting the covers down. When they came up
again, I moved to the front of the boat again to photograph the
passing scenery. The local guys I was sitting with were fascinated by
my camera and finally worked up the courage to indicated that they
would like to have a look, so I showed them some pics on the
viewscreen, including shots of the girls on the elephant ride in
Laos. I was listening to my iPod, which they also found fascinating,
so I played them a few of the videos I have on there – of the girls
when they were much younger and snow in Winchester.
When we finally
arrived at Huay Xai, the pier was incredibly congested with moored
boats and we spent some time attempting to forcibly squeeze our boat
in between to others. By the time we disembarked, we were pretty sure
that it was too late to cross the border, so we walked into town to
see if we could find somewhere to stay the night. It was a long, hot
trudge, but when we finally got there we quickly found a decent
enough hotel with a cheap room available with a double and a single
bed. Dusk was falling by then, so we dumped our bags and headed out
to look for somewhere to eat dinner, almost immediately running into
Sam and Laura from Chi Phat and Don Det and Luang Prabang. They were
eating dinner with a young American girl who had just come down from
Chiang Mai (which is where we're headed). Kate began to quiz her
about here transport experiences, but when she announced that she had
travelled down on local transport, which was great because she 'just
loved the local people', we quickly lost interest, bid them all
farewell and resumed our restaurant hunt. I had seen a place with a
barbecue grill up the road and we stopped in there for some beer,
sausages and pork skewers. We then walked back into the main part of
town to see if we could find a better restaurant but quickly gave up
and went back to the barbecue place. Zoe was dead on her feet by now,
so I dropped her back at the hotel, and then we had a pleasant enough
meal chatting to a group of young German guys – big and burly and
covered in tattoos but strangely risk-averse (they were very curious
about how dangerous tubing was). Back at the hotel, we organised a
tuk-tuk for tomorrow with the hotel 'porter', set the alarm and went
to bed.
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