So, I woke up on a quiet early Friday morning for my last bit of time in Thailand. I had already packed up the night before, so I was ready to go. I shifted to the front of the guesthouse balcony, took the pictures that I posted of the river in the previous blog post, and waited. I got up extra early, but not too terribly much so... soon enough, though, the other people who had booked this same boat showed up. From this guesthouse, there was three people. One was an older lady named Julia, from the UK, and then two younger guys, one named Kristian (also from the UK) and the other named Mark, from Switzerland.
The four of us were put on a tuk tuk and taken to a place to get photos taken to be ready for the on the spot Lao visas we’d be getting in a short time from now. I started getting to know the three of these people at that point, but only in a very casual way. It was still too early to really get to know a person. I’ll have none of that until after noon, thanks.
There were actually two other guys, as well. They were twin brothers, named, I think, John and Tim London or something along those lines. Go figure, they were also from the UK. They, however, were taking a speed boat, not the slow boat.
The slow boat was to take two days, one night. We’d stop by at a midway town, I think it was named Pak Beng, and then start again the next morning. I could’ve booked a place for that night ahead of time, but I kind of figured that its not like I’d be left to hang out to dry if I showed up without a reservation. As it turned out, I made the right choice.
The speed boat, on the other hand, makes the entire trip from the border town to Luang Prabang (that’s the name of the city in Laos we were bound for) within a few hours. It’s also at your own peril, as, especially during the dry season, but also at any time of the year anyway, its fairly dangerous, and people do die taking the speed boat every year. You have to wear a helmet.
I personally wanted the experience of the leisurely ride down the river, and a break from cities, so the speed boat was anathema to me, and I steered far clear of it. Everyone else, mostly, was in agreement with me. Nevertheless, the six of us were all going to take a quick zip across the river to the Lao border together.
The boat we hobbled into was a rickety little thing, and it almost felt as though we were liable to tip over at any moment as we putted across the Mekong. Obviously, we didn’t, but our suspicion was palpable.
It only took a scant few minutes to get across. Now that I think about it, there were a few other people on that boat as well, including one rather large American pretending a foppish British accent that didn’t quite seem to get it when, in response to his query as to where I was from, I said “the same place as you”. There was maybe two other people also, but I never spoke to them, so I’m not sure what their deal was.
When we got to the other side, there was a full-on gaggle of Westerners lined up to get visas. Since we had arranged things through our guesthouse, we had our own little .... contact, for lack of a better word, who somehow streamlined things so that we didn’t have to wait with the rest of the Western punters. At this point, I was chatting quite heavily with Mark, Julia, and Kristian, and at some point or another I finally heard someone yell out my last name. When I went to check it out, given the reaction of all the Westerners in the immediate vicinity, it seems as though my name had been called for at least a few minutes, and people were rather exasperated. I laughed it off, and went to see what the fuss was about. Seems as though my visa was ready to go, I just had to pay $35 USD. Problem was, I didn’t have that money on me. I had some Thai Baht, but not enough. I had been told I’d be able to access an ATM on this border to get the necessary cash, but it was nowhere in sight, so, finally, Kristian fielded the money for me, to the tune of even more exasperated Westerners as I held them up a few seconds longer.
But upon giving them the money, I was given the visa promptly, and the rest of my group started getting theirs as well immediately after, and we headed up a quick hill to a different world and the beginning of a crazy day.
Our first priority was food, as we weren’t sure whether any would be available or commendable while on boat. So we sat down at a closeby restaurant and got ourselves whatever we fancied. I think I had some more noodles, but whatever. The lady who ran the place was extremely curmudgeonly, and for no darn good reason.
Our contact for some reason wanted to corral us into this one little travel agency, for no reason we could detect. At some point he said something about getting there earlier to get the best seats, but this didn’t really make any sense to us at the time, so we just did our thing, and gathered a few supplies from some nearby convenience stores. For my part, I just got a bag of chips and a couple bottles of water, as well as visiting an ATM in town to get plenty of Lao Kip (the currency there, which goes about 8,500 to the dollar). Here's a picture of us walking towards the ATM, the sign for which you can see in the upper lefthand corner.
Finally we gathered, and a minivan took us to the docks, where a bunch of other people were waiting too. There was some passport shuffling, and a lot of people buying sandwiches, as we encountered our first of many Lao sandwich carts. I got a couple bottles of Beer Lao and contented myself with that, cracking open one, the earliest alcohol I’ve ever had at about 10:30am. No one was around for me to pay for that one, so the first bottle was on Lao itself, apparently. And I waited like five minutes.
It seemed like nothing was really happening at this point, so I wandered around some to take some photos of the dock area, as shown below:
Sometime later, apparently everything was set and good to go, and we were huddle onto the boat. Sure enough, there actually was such a thing as best seats. I don’t know if I ever took a picture of the interior as a casual shot, but basically the front half of the boat had soccer mom minivan seats lined against the windows, one row facing one row. The first thirty people on would get these seats, and they looked rather more comfortable than the rest of the seats, which were more like wooden pews. This is actually what me and the others originally thought all of the seats were like, so its not like it was that much of a disappointment. We had even bought our own little pillows to accomodate our posteriors for the long ride, something that is like a little cottage industry in this port town. Everyone had their lame little pillows.
Mark, Kristian, Julia and I settled into our two little pews and cracked open some more Beer Laos. We were sitting on the boat for at least a good thirty minutes before it ever started moving; I think we had crossed the river to Laos at around 10am, and we finally set off at around noon. I think by the time we set off, Kristian and I each had already purchased at least another bottle of Beer Lao, so we had three 650mL bottles down by noon, more or less. Pretty ridiculous, and a record for me I don’t ever aim to break. Here is a shot of the boat leaving shore:
The first hour or two of the trip was unremarkable, perfect. We cruised down the beautiful Mekong, and rocks, eddies, shoreside huts and eyefulls of green passed by as we putted down the river. We took in the fresh air and the reprieve from the pandemonium of Thai cities, and I think we breathed a collective sigh of relief.
We got to know each other, and rather deeply. Kristian is a bit of an alpha dog sort (with hair that’s too deliberately styled for Southeast Asia if you ask me) who has his own business in London. That business is delivery haircuts. I’d never heard of such a thing, but its sensible enough once you think of it, and apparently he’s done quite well for himself with it. He’s Greek by ethnicity, and his last name makes it pretty obvious, ending with the requisite –onous as they so often do; nevertheless, he has it tattooed on his arms just in case he forgets his own identity. Of course, that’s not the real reason for the tattoo, but its what I prefer to think.
Mark is a college student, and was just on a simple break. His position honestly wasn’t that much different from my own, and of the three, he was the hardest to really get into conversation with. That all changed when we started talking about music. Like the stereotypes go, being European, he was a bit more into electronic music than I am, but we still had a decent amount of overlap, and we bantered back and forth about concerts we’ve been to and such. He had been to a fair amount more festivals than I had, and at the mention of Glastonbury Festival (annual concert festival held in the Scottish city of Glastonbury for those of you who don’t know) Julia piped in and informed us that she’s worked at Glastonbury almost every single year for the past . . . decade? Something like that. Just volunteering, if I recall correctly.
This is where we got to know more about Julia, a 45 year old grandmother who’s traveling on her own for six months, throughout most of the Eastern hemisphere, excepting Russian, Korea, China, and Japan. She was in almost no way, shape or form what I would expect of a lady in her own position. She also worked at a drug rehabilitation center, and had her own history with substances as well.
She had a rather large number of stories to tell, and you can probably connect some dots yourself given the information I’ve just provided. She seemed like a very sweet lady though, so the four of us still got along famously, if perhaps incongruously.
Perhaps two hours into our boat ride, we stopped for refreshments. Children from a nearby village piled onto our boat and tried to ply us with chips, cakes, beer, etcetera. I have to admit it was a bit odd seeing children sell beer, but, anything goes in other parts of the world I suppose! I took a few pictures of this, not knowing when next I’d see anything like it:
I didn’t really feel comfortable with the idea of children peddling alcohol to be honest, but this would end up being the least of what I’d feel uncomfortable with in my soon-to-come experiences.
I leaned out after this and took a couple pictures of the village from which these people had come down from to sell us stuff. I wonder how much of their money comes from selling crap to Westerners on these boats. Here's one of the village shots, and then some of a lone child carrying a bottle of beer Lao, I'm not sure why for.
We stocked up on some more crap, and set off yet again. By now I think Kristian and I might’ve been on round five, but who’s counting? Also, at this point, we had already spent about four hours together, including the time prior to embarking, so Kristian and I moved to socialize with some other people. The two of us soon settled on two German girls. Kristian in particular was planning on trying to work some magic on one of them. For my part I just thought they were pretty, and therefore wanted to talk to them. I couldn’t contemplate anything further, given the logistics that would be necessary to figure out a way to actually, you know, DO something while confined on such a small boat. It occurs to me now that perhaps Kristian was just planning on that evening at the midway town, but for some reason it didn’t strike me at the time.
One of them in particular had better fluency in English, and was therefore a bit easier to chat with. Unfortunately, that was also the one Kristian had set his eyes on, and he didn’t totally care for the fact that I was distracting her with my own conversing, and he tried to goad me into talking to the other girl only instead. I talked to that other girl as well, but it was a weird situation for me. I don’t know, perhaps he intended for me to be his wingman? I just wanted to chat.
We moved to the back of the boat, which had a little vestibule with a bunch of old guys kicking back a couple of beers. The old guys were mostly British Commonwealthers, from the UK, Canada, or Australia, and though I tried to be gregarious, they didn’t seem all that interested in chatting with a bunch of (in their minds) kids. To be honest, I was a bit disappointed with them. I think it might’ve been worse because the girls were there too, and I think they were sort of in the mood for a man cave or something.
I leaned out over the rail of the vestibule, much to the chagrin of various people who feared for my imminent death, and debated clambering on to the top of the boat. In fact, there was a little Lao kid running around on top, and it would’ve been a simple thing to get up. However, I worried more about my ability to get back down afterwards, so ultimately I decided against it. I still took some pictures of the river around, though:
After that, some Lao guy came to the back and told us we weren’t supposed to be back here. I’m not really sure why. I think they said something about how it affects the weight distribution of the boat, and while I suppose its possible, it sure sounds like a lot of crap to me, given that there were another 100 people in the front of the boat, and we only added up to maybe ten.
I think that the boatstaff might’ve been on the payroll of the old guys, because they didn’t try to usher them out, only us young whippersnappers. Whatever.
After that, we retreated back to our pews. At this point, it looked like we were going to make another snack stop, but it wasn’t so; instead, we pulled over to the side of the river for no discernible reason. It might’ve been a mass potty break, I’m not sure. So I grabbed my camera and got out, stretching my legs and my trigger finger. When it seemed as though we were going to stop for more than a minute, I set off to explore the little plot of land we had settled on, and discovered that there was a livestock farm right nearby. Naturally, I took some photos. It was just a bunch of cows (as well as the pictures I took of the people getting off of the boat):
However, one of those cows got really . . . I don’t know, I guess frightened, by my appearance, and started trying to run this way and that, kicking up a good amount of dust:
All of a sudden, he actually managed to find a way out of his pen.
At this time, I figured it would be best for me to step away, and head back. I let Kristian know a cow was on the loose. We both found it amusing enough, which goes to show how dry our existence was at that very moment. Finally we got back aboard.
We were coasting down for another thirty minutes or so, and then, all of a sudden,
WHOMP.
A huge noise from down below, and at that point I had been hanging out close to the aft, where the engine was. All deckhands rushed to the engine, and started struggling this way and that. When it appeared no one else was going to join them, I creeped in and peeked at what was going on. There wasn’t exactly an air of panic, and in fact it seemed like a lot of people on board were still mostly unaware something was going on at that moment.
I couldn’t really tell what those deckhands were doing, but they had grabbed a bunch of towels and were trying to grapple with what seemed to be the boat’s driveshaft. The consternation in their faces belied the fact that whatever was happening, wasn’t going well.
It was only a couple minutes later that worries about what was going on had migrated from this isolated part of the ship all the way to the front, and things started to get a bit more tense.
I’m not really sure what was going through everyone else’s minds. I’m pretty sure it was utter chaos. In my mind, the word SINK weighed heavy.
Five minutes later, the captain of the boat had pulled us over to the side of the river, at a rather steep embankment. There was a sudden rush of all people on board to try and get off of the ship, and people clambered up the sand embankment on all fours. At first it was every last person for themself. I didn’t go up immediately, but a few minutes later, it seemed like there was little else to do, so up I went. Soon afterwards, when it was apparent the ship wasn’t actually sinking, people started going back down to get their things, and I followed suit.
There was a village on a hillside nearby, maybe just a few hundred meters away, and its denizens slowly came out to watch the drama unfold. I’m not sure what they were expecting, but I know what they were hoping for at that moment. Ten points if you can guess!
They kept their distance at first, and we were left to our own devices to play out a million possibilities within our minds as to what was going on. Scuttlebutt moved from one mouth to two ears and over again, and we were no closer to figuring it out. An older Lao man wearing a shirt, but curiously no pants, just underwear bounded out of nowhere to try and grapple with the situation as well. I think I have a picture of him here:
Kristian, myself, and some others clambered atop a sandy rockside to the left for the heck of it, and to get a better view. Kristian, for his part, was fairly drunk by this point, as were those German girls, and he played the part of photographer for them, and encouraged them to kiss each other on camera, to which they only too happily obliged. Julia rolled her eyes in what was probably truthfully a touch of envy. I personally didn’t know what to think, and trudged on to take more pictures.
Now, at this point, I have to say that I’m a little unclear on a bit of chronology. There were several other British people that, by around this time, I knew, but I don’t recall if I met them on the boat prior to this or if I met them on the embankment. For our sake, we’re going to say it was the embankment, and the most telling thing was that one British guy had a guitar, which I immediately asked if I could play, to which he willingly obliged. I found out his name is Luke.
Maybe twenty minutes later, another slowboat comes by; obeying the laws of the sea, they pull over to try and help us as well.
As soon as we saw this boat, all of the passengers from boat one went back down to the boat, and we pirated ourselves over the rails from one boat to the other, for the most part. I however figured we weren’t going anywhere just quite yet, and lifted myself between the rooftops of the two boats to take some other interesting photos:
There was a shift right back up the sand embankment as my fellow passengers suddenly realized that this second boat could not hold the combined weight of the passengers of each. I laughed and kept taking some pictures. It wasn’t long until some copycats came along and lifted themselves up to the top of the boats as well, and they were all young British brats, but fine enough gents for my taste.
It was amply evident at this point that we were going nowhere, fast. The British kids started using the edge of the roof as a strategic place from which to pee off of, and I wished I didn’t care enough about other people seeing to do the same.
There seemed to be a rumor floating around that we’d be anchoring at this spot for the night. Disbelief caused a tidal reaction akin to watching waves break on a shore over and over for another twenty minutes, a ping pong battle of wondering are we really staying? Finally it was made clear, we had no choice. It was camping time.
I can only speak for myself in regards to what this felt like, at the moment. I couldn’t really process it, to be honest. It felt so disconnected. There was no plan offered to us as to how we were going to actually get away the next day; everything was left in the air. It didn’t feel dire, but at the same time it obviously didn’t feel like we were in a good situation.
The sun set (which also meant I couldn't take any more pictures), as it had been threatening to do for some time, and they got to work setting up a big bonfire. Villagers came down and started setting up shop, literally. They brought with themselves all various sundries, hoping upon hope that we’d buy every last thing they had for us. Some westerners headed out towards the village itself, something I never really had considered doing myself. Apparently they were going there to buy like a blanket or something.
A lot of the camaraderie that we had had prior to this point kind of dissipated into nothingness, and into a grander “thing” that is much harder to describe. Whereas prior we had all had our little cliques that we had spent most of our time with, this broke into a frenzy of harried activity, with the average feeling being one of excitement on being on an “adventure” more than anything else.
I grabbed Luke’s guitar again (I didn’t mention before, but his name is Luke), and got to know him and his girlfriend Polly a little better. They were both 18 or 19 years old, pretty young, and pretty crazy for going on such a big trip by themselves.
While I played guitar, I found out that as of yet Luke actually doesn’t know how to play, but he does does play drums in a band called the . . . Hattie Carrols if I remember correctly. I found out that he has been extremely inspired by Blink 182, of all things, and that listening to Blink has been a transformative experience for him.
For those of you reading this who don’t know, Blink 182 is a pop-punk band from my own hometown, that started out in a flurry in the late 90’s and the turn of the millenium. I liked them just like every other Southern California white kid liked them, and they had broad enough appeal for people outside of Southern California too.
They released a few more albums, and got successively more pop and less punk, and then broke up; the band, which was a three piece, then split into two different bands. The guitarist, Tom Delonge, in particular, started up Angels and Airwaves, another band that did fairly well for itself, despite the fact that, in my humble opinion, it was utter trash.
Just recently, the band has gotten more or less back together, and did a reunion tour etc. A lot of people like myself lament for the days prior when punk had a bit more teeth in it, even though I never was around for the first wave of punk, back decades ago, which truly had teeth. The second wave of the 90s was decidedly more accessible, as far as punk is concerned. This was the heyday of bands like the Offspring, Green Day, and, of course, Blink 182. Over the next few years, they managed to make it pretty damn tame, and for people who valued punk as a genre that criticized society in one way or another such as I did, it was a sad thing to see, especially as it segued to contemporary bands like My Chemical Romance and Fallout Boy.
So to hear this kid say that Blink 182 was a massive influence was a bit off-putting, at the time. As he spoke at length about it, though, it started to make more sense. Apparently, in his social circle, the only music that was really ever listened to was rap, and he listened to it all the same. At some point, though, for a reason that is lost to me upon writing this, he discovered Blink 182, whose sunny bright sounds tinged with a youthful naivete and optimism (most of the time) appealed to him in a strong way.
I still think that current Blink 182 music is crap, but it was a good lesson to see that we all come from different contexts, and a piece of art really is quite subjective. From the viewpoint he described, I could see why it was that the music I think is crap would appeal and I could truly appreciate that, even though I might silently be wishing to upload some good stuff to his mp3 list.
I kept on playing, and Kristian danced on by with some little flashlights and gave me a weird sort of disco-dancing spotlight treatment as I played a variety of songs and sang out as best I could. A variety of people encouraged me to keep on going, which was nice. Maybe an hour later, I finally retired (Kristian had moved on some time before that, I didn’t have THAT much of a spotlight) and I took a survey of what was currently going on.
Most people had settled into holding patterns. In the middle of the big bonfire was the part that had been damaged by the river bed. They were doing their best to heat it up to a point where it would be malleable, and then beat it into shape. Every thirty minutes or so, the futile clanging of hammers on the driveshaft would ring throughout the impromptu campsite, and we’d all wait with bated breath to see if any dents had been evened out. I’ll spoil the ending now; they didnt.
I settled down in a spot with Julia, Luke, Polly, and a few other Brits. There was another young couple, named Ben and Sarah, an older British guy (in his 30s) named Kieran, and then a Northern Irishman who was in his late 20s named Rick. There were also a couple other hanger ons that weren’t strictly a part of the group, but were around every so often. Eventually Mark joined the group as well, and Kristian flitted by a few times, as was his disposition.
We chatted and chatted about this that and the other. I started to get to know all of them, but I didn’t take that much stock in a lot of it as I didn’t really anticipate seeing them much more in the future, and I had already met a ton of people that day. They were all quite affable chaps though, so it was fun.
It was around this time that hunger started kicking in. We had already raided the cabinets of the boat for anything it had left to eat or drink, especially if it contained alcohol, so now we depended on the villagers for our liquor cabinets and noodles. In the bizarre (for me) twist, alluded to earlier, they also sold copious amounts of opium. The Lao children were around while the opium was being sold, too, and some of them were even selling it themselves. This is what really troubled me.
Now, partially as far as I understand, there’s a fairly different culture in Laos in regards to opium use; in particular, when elders use it, its deemed entirely acceptable, supposedly. But this still precludes the idea of it being socially acceptable (or proper) for young Westerners to be getting giddy off of it, instead of using it as a pain reliever as supposedly older Lao people do.
What was even worse was that some of the children around appeared, to me and my not-particularly-expert eye, to be on the drugs themselves. They acted in such an eccentric way that it didn’t appear anything like what I consider to be normal child behavior, and so far in my travels, it seems like one other universal thing you can count on with kids is the way that they express their silliness. In the various countries I’ve been to, its always pretty much the same sort of behavior, laughing, movements. This was different though, and that really freaked me out.
It didn’t seem to bother anyone else, either. In truth, this was my first step into a world I’d never much been familiar with in the past, the world of narcotics. In this post, and a couple future ones, I’m not going to name any names, but the stories will be as detailed as I can manage. The people around me not only didn’t seem to be particularly perturbed, they became willing participants in this scenario. I know, technically, that people do drugs, and rather often. However, I’ve never really seen it in my life, aside from marijuana, so it was a bit of a culture shock.
It reminded me back of a time in Pacific Beach, San Diego, when I was apartment searching, and I went to this one prospective apartment, and it turned out that the two people who already lived there were both bartenders, and that they liked having parties after they got off work, so, pretty late, and that if I wanted to live there, I’d have to be cool with cocaine use, as a lot of the people who came to these parties used it. I was just speechless, but they said it just as though it was a totally simple, normal fact of life. And maybe it is. But not for me, anyway.
Of course I passed on the opium, but I had three helpings of instant noodles. It didn’t hurt that the Lao girl cooking them up was rather cute. I wished at that moment that I knew how to say more than just hello and thank you, but, that’s life! Those noodles were delicious, though, at that moment. So nice to have something other than Lays chips. Add in a few bottles of Beer Lao, and I was in for a rather pleasant evening.
Someone had also scored a bottle of Lao whiskey at some point; probably on a trip to the nearby village. By this point, I’d guess it was definitely past 9pm, maybe even 10. But stranded on an anonymous river beach, who can say?
The liquor got passed around, and people were merry. Julia, however, got a little too merry. Were it not for the fact that I know she won’t be reading this, I might hesitate a little in telling the story, but I err on the side of giving my readers a good story.
So, she had a little too much of . . . something. Later on, the story was that she had just had too much of the whiskey. I still have my doubts, but then again I don’t have that much experience with people who are well and fully trashed.
She became utterly incapable of normal human interactions. She rolled around bewilderingly on the sand, moaning and groaning incoherently. It sounded a bit like a wounded elephant or something, if I may say so. I was pretty worried, and didn’t really know what to do in reaction to it. Everyone else certainly was paying attention also, and alternated between worry and amusement. At some point, Julia started crawling onto any guy that was near enough. At one point, that included me. I think Mark had been the first victim, but I couldn’t swear to it. At first I was inclined to just let her do whatever, as it seemed like she was just going to cuddle. When her leg swung over to my other side, and her hands started hoisting her up to a position with . . . better leverage, I decided that’s where I’d draw the line, and I had to kick her off and move away. She was a nice woman, but not that nice; more importantly, it was just too fricking weird.
We all giggled a little bit, as we tried our best to just hang out casually. I decided to get up and walk off the weird experience I had just gone through, and wandered aimlessly. I stopped by to talk to some of the other people I had met over the day, including the German girls (and their other German friends) and so on.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Julia had mounted another guy, the older British guy, and she was having quite the time of it. The clothes were on, but if you were judging from her movements, you wouldn’t guess it. I hear later that she had done her best in her altered state to remove at least some clothing, but I guess one way or another she didn’t succeed. Knowing that guy, it wasn’t because he stopped her.
It was at this point that I think I had to tap out and try to call it a night. Over the next hour or so, I tried shifting between a few different places for trying to sleep. I tried sleeping near the Brits, but I couldn’t find a comfortable place for it; I moved over to a tarp the Germans had set up, where Kristian and Mark were stationed as well. They had sleeping bags with them, intelligently enough, and it seemed they had also both purchased blankets, something I absolutely envied.
It had gotten cold, ridiculously so, given the incredibly comfortable warmth of the day and afternoon time. It wasn’t quite freezing, but it wasn’t far off, and a merciless wind added insult to injury. I was totally not equipped for the occasion, but took out all the warm clothing I had and hoped for the best. It didn’t work. Eventually I decided to take my chances by climbing back onto the boat and trying to hole up there, away from the winds of the night.
When I stepped aboard, it was like a ghost ship. I would guess there were around forty bodies strewn about the interior of the ship, clinging on to whatever space they could. Some were sitting in the comfy chairs, some were laid out on the pews, some curled up against the walls. Given the utter silence punctured only by the occasional clunking of the second boat against the crashed boat, it felt as if I had walked onto the scene of some horrific mass accident. I made my way through as quietly as I could, surveying the area for a place to try to sleep. I saw a space that looked adequate, so I went back and got my backpack and such, and tried to set up myself in that little spot.
Despite my best efforts, I still found it too cold to comfortably sleep, so I instead just curled up in a fetal position and waited out the next five hours as patiently as I could.
Every last movement on the ship caught my ears and my eyes. Over the next two hours, I found I wasn’t the only one to have the idea of moving off of the sands and onto the planks. I don’t know if any of them were any more successful than myself in sleeping. I saw the German girls join our ranks at one point. I wondered to myself what had happened to all the others from the second boat, as, after making first contact with them and then starting our mass beach party, I never saw any of them again.
I shivered more than I ever had in my life prior, and hoped I wouldn’t catch pneumonia. I didn’t. Lol.
I think I might’ve gotten in an hour of sleep, somehow, despite myself. Soon enough, though, the sun started rising above the horizon directly beyond the fore of the boat, as, at that time, the river ran west-east.
Over the next hour or two, people slowly started rising from their miserable slumbers, and all the excitement of adventure that had been in our eyes and smiles the evening before were clearly erased, by this point.
Everyone moved in a stupor and a daze of days disappeared. Another hour later, and it was around 8am. At this point, another boat showed up. We were mostly thrilled, though at first it wasn’t really clear what we were supposed to do. Finally, all the people from the crashed boat grabbed their stuff, then rail hopped through the second and onto the third. I love feeling like a pirate. People shuffled aboard and lined up to get aboard, but man was it ragged. Beer crates lined the world we had known from the night before.
There weren’t any heartfelt goodbyes with the people of the second boat that had come by to try to save us the previous evening, only an urge to get and and get going. There was, however, a lot of waving from the villagers, who lined up on the sandy bank to see us off.
And, just like that, we were off.
Man, it couldn’t be much more different from the previous day’s boat ride. A couple dozen people had more or less collapsed and we scooted around the pews to make a communal pile for people to sleep some more in. Julia and a couple of the others I had recently met constituted a part of this pile.
Kristian had also lost most of his boyish energy, and Mark seemed to be trying to sleep it all off as well. Somehow, I wasn’t feeling that tired, so I did my thing and carried on. I made friends with an Australian kid who sat next to me (about the same age as me, that is) and talked to his Taiwanese dad some as well, in Chinese, which caught him off guard.
Appropriately, a morning mist covered the river, reflecting our own lost spirits, though it burned off by noon.
The Australian guy was pretty cool. He was in the middle of a long traveling period as well, which included a ten day stint in Myanmar, where he got to see more or less everything I was hoping I’d be able to see as well. He also read a good amount, and was in the middle of reading George Orwell’s Burmese Days. He had been working on it the previous day as well, and was nearing the finish line today. We decided we’d do a small book trade, and so he grabbed some book or another of mine and I took his when he finally finished.
There was a lot of jibber jabber back and forth about what we thought the plan for the day would be. Some people thought perhaps we’d stop by the halfway town and use the reservations we had previously made for the night, turning this into a three day two night trip. I thought that was a bunch of bologna, and told them so, and that it made a lot more sense for us to steam all the way through to Luang Prabang in one day, as we had only been shy of the midway town by a couple hours the previous day, and we had gotten up quite a bit earlier this day to set off. Also, undoubtedly, we weren’t the only ones still going in slow boats each day, and there were probably a couple others starting this day that had made reservations for the night in the same midway town, so there’s no way they could double up.
They didn’t seem to understand my logic, and in a way, their argument sounded almost like a call for mutiny. They actually WANTED to stop at that halfway place and make use of the prior reservations. I could understand being upset about wasted money but I couldn’t imagine not wanting to get to our actual final destination. They all seemed to be in prompt agreement though, and Kieran spearheaded this point of view.
Around 11am we made it to Pak Beng.
There was a utterly unexplained shift to another boat, and then a bombardment of people selling cakes, sandwiches, and all that jazz. I bought myself some banana bread and more chips. Here's a picture of the sales kids boarding another boat identical to ours:
We sat around going nowhere for about thirty minutes. As usual, the language barrier made it so there was fuck-all information on what was going to happen with us. I still betted on us bee-lining for Luang Prabang, though I took a few minutes to step outside and go up some stairs to get an overview of that section of the river.
It was a river, alright.
I got back on board, and we took off soon after that, and for the next several hours, we just charged forward. No one was in a mood to talk, it seemed, so I buried myself in a book.
The next few hours passed exactly like this. Some people wondered if we were going to make it; this was really the only topic of conversation. It was really quite amazing how long people could go on talking about whether or not they thought we’d make it to our destination before sun fell. By my simple mental calculus, it seemed like a pretty sure bet. The stop at the midway point that went for well over half an hour threw it off a little bit, but I was still betting we’d make it.
Eventually, the sun started setting. At this point, we were looking for every slightest clue that would give us an idea of what our fate was. I noted that there seemed to be an increasing amount of telephone wiring and satellite dishes and the like, and figured this must mean we were getting closer to a population center. It was more hoping than believing, and as the sun fell behind the mountains on the western bank, I didn’t really know what to think. Then, lights started apearing in the distance on the eastern bank.
Literally, as day turned to night, we arrived in Luang Prabang. Night fell as we parked our slow boat in a dock of dozens of other slow boats. It could not possibly have been cut any closer, but, we had made it to Luang Prabang. What follows, as a slightly different than usual ending to my blog posts, is a series of blurry photos that I hope reflect somewhat what it felt like to be on that boat in the last minutes before we knew everything would be alright for that day.
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