Laosing About

We made it! A two-day slow boat adventure down the Mekong river from the border town of Houxai to Louang Prabang, via the notorious Pak Beng.

After all that worry I had nothing to fear from Pak Beng. Yes, it was lawless - and there were men with guns (more for the tourist protection, I would like to think. But hey, imagine you're in a small town in the middle of a jungle, where the electricity in the entire town is switched off at 10.30pm and there is nothing to do.

You can't read, you can't listen to music, you can't watch telly. You can't stay up late with an enforced curfew, the entire town is in darkness and it's hot.

The thought of going to bed at the same time every night would send me nuts and I think the locals definitely get restless - that's why I understand their need to get absolutely drunk.

One of my rules of travelling is, of course, always do what the locals do - so we did... we got absolutely legless. Adam, David (our newly acquired Aussie travelling companion) and I sat outside on the balcony of our hotel with the hotel's assistant and drank Beer Lao (Fantastic beer by the way).

We listened to all the Laos women singing their traditional songs and then watched them all stumble home up the one-street town, past our building and shouting 'sabaideeeeeeeee' with smiles.

Then the lights went out.

We awoke the next morning to the sound of cock-a-doodle-doos and all the mountains clouded in mist. All the villagers were arriving from the mountains to visit the morning market with machetes in hand (presumably to cut there way through the thick jungle).

We set off for Louang Prabang in our slow boat, an eight-hour journey ahead of us. Adam has described our journey along the Mekong beautifully. If you would like to read it follow the link 'Adam's blog' on the right side of my blog.