Chiang Khong, as we soon found out, really serves as a border crossing town and not much more. By around 8 pm the streets grew extremely quiet and the shops were all shut for the evening. This wasn't such a bad thing for us, given that we were pretty knackered after a long bus journey, so we decided to head down to the riverside for some supper and head to bed.
The next morning it was another early rise, and sure enough the roosters were sounding off at 6 am and we got our gear together in anticipation of our onward journey to Laos. The Mekong river looked very peaceful, and as we ate our breakfast we were both shaking our heads in disbelief that we were actually going across to Laos and to do that meant taking a small tail boat trip that lasts for a minute or so.
At the other side, in Laos that is, we arrived in Huay Xai which is again the equivalent of Chiang Khong i.e. a border town and not much else. Being Malaysian, I for once had the privilege of not having to queue or pay for a visa whereas Leon had to go through some formalities of purchasing a visa before being able to carry on with the journey. This should have been a simple affair that lasted 15 minutes maximum, but the system was so shocking because, frankly, there was no system. People turned up in their boats, handed over passports and documents, and waited for what seemed like a lifetime whilst the border officials manually filled in some information onto a computer database before processing the visas. Eventually, after about 1 hr 30 minutes, Leon's name was called out and we were allowed to leave the 'immigration area'.
The next part of the trip was one that we had both been looking forward to. That is, the slow boat down the Mekong to Luang Prabang. We jumped into a tuk tuk and made our way to the other pier where we found our boat and luckily secured some seats towards the front. This was at 9 am. Little did we know that the boat wouldn't leave until it was full, and that ended up being at 12 30 pm! However, we had been warned about the poor timekeeping in Laos and the acronym PDR or Please Don't Rush, so instead we befriended a lovely German lady who was on a cycling trip in Laos, as well as some crazy Belgian guys (who weren't crazy, they were good fun but very lively!) and settled in for the trip. Finally we set off around midday and with the stunning scenery and gentle sway of the boat, we both felt extremely lucky to be able to do this trip. Unfortunately I started feeling a little ill towards the end of the 8 hour journey ( I think that this was due to sitting sideways to the direction of travel) but luckily kept it together until we reached Pak Beng. There isn't a lot to say about Pak Beng, it really serves as a stopover in the middle of nowhere for people going to Luang Prabang! We all managed to stay in what seemed like a nice-ish guesthouse for 260 Baht but both Leon and I felt like there were some unwanted creepy crawlies in our beds at night. Oh well, that's all part of the fun, I guess... Another early night after a fairly decent meal and we were up again at 6 am to secure more comfortable seats for our onward journey the next day to Luang Prabang.
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