Travel Diaries: The Mekong River

We packed our bags before setting out for our last breakfast in the hippie haven that is Pai. As we were meandering down “Walking Street”, looking for something even remotely resemblant of an English breakfast cafe, Eden remembered she had arranged to meet up with her new friend from the night before, Michael, at a cafe. As we were unknowingly getting closer to said cafe, she noticed Michael stood outside smoking. We checked the time and it was ten o’clock - he was bang on time waiting for her.

We wandered over to him and said good morning, and his eyes lit up with delight, as if refusing to believe Eden had actually kept her word and turned up. He was an interesting character; he spoke with a faded North East accent, had a look of an older, scruffier version of Michael van Gerwen, and was full of interesting anecdotes. He would laugh at his own jokes, with his mouth wide boasting his lack of teeth, bouncing up and down, and looking around for approval. He said he’d been to Pai fifty or sixty times, visiting from the infamous city of Wuhan, where he earns a living as an English teacher. Everyone has a compelling COVID story, but Michael’s first-hand account of the initial outbreak in China had us all captivated. He was a lifelong Celtic supporter, and spoke to me excitedly about the upcoming Champions League game between the Scottish champions and my beloved Aston Villa.

I enjoyed what was the closest thing to a full English breakfast in what felt like forever, before regrettably saying goodbye to Michael. He was preparing to go on a three-day Buddhist retreat just a couple of hours north of Pai, with the intention of stopping smoking.

We made our way back to the Revolution hostel and checked out, before summoning Brad, Tanya and Helena to say goodbye, as we were temporarily all going our separate ways. Tanya and Helena were travelling south to Chiang Mai and then on to Vientiane, Laos, via sleeper bus. They would be in Hanoi at a similar time to ourselves, and we had arranged to meet up with them then. Jannik and Jonas (not in attendance) were also going the same way, but from there flying south to Phuket. We would reconvene later that evening once we all got to Chiang Mai for a final supper. So objectively, we were only really saying goodbye to Brad - everyone else was simply “see you later”. But it was still sad, as the group we had formed was dissolving, and we feared we wouldn’t be able to replicate such a tight-knit dynamic with anyone else. Brad had pledged to meet us in Cambodia in early March, but his promise was lacking substance or expectation. It had been great meeting him, and we really didn’t want our experience in Pai to end. He walked us to the bus station and waved us off.

The journey back to Chiang Mai was unproblematic, and we soon found ourselves back in Thailand’s second largest city. We checked in to the Agga CNX hostel, before jumping in a taxi to the all too familiar Night Bazaar. There, we met up with Jannik, Jonas, Tanya and Helena, and relived the previous day and night’s revelry. Fatigued and jaded, the atmosphere merely an echo of the previous days, we stomached what we could from the food trucks, before wishing each other a safe onward journey.

Back at the Agga CNX hostel, we got ourselves into bed early, ready for the six o’clock bus to Chiang Rai. We would spend one night there, before being picked up at 5am the following day and taken over the border into Laos, and then it was onto the two-day slow boat down the Mekong River, to Luang Prabang, our next destination. The hostel was patrolled by a beautiful tabby cat, who was seemingly incapable of channeling his inner huntsman, and allowed a rooster next door to cock-a-doodle-do all night long, thus preventing us from getting any decent sleep. I resisted the temptation to nip over and snap the little thing’s neck myself, and woke up ill-tempered.

The drive to Chiang Rai was boring. Unable to appreciate the scenery due to physical and mental exhaustion, I thought it best to crack on with the diary. We arrived in the ghost-town that was Chiang Rai at around eleven o’clock in the morning. Sunday is generally considered a rest day across the nation, with even restaurants and bars reducing their opening hours, but the city didn’t have much going for it anyway, irrespective of what day of the week it was.

After some below-par food we jumped into a tuk-tuk and instructed him to take us to the only sight worth seeing in the province - Wat Rong Khun, better known as the White Temple. It’s a stunning piece of architecture, and was definitely worth visiting, but we weren’t in the best of moods and probably didn’t fully appreciate its beauty. It’s strangely situated just off of the side of a main road, next to a building caging roosters for the purpose of cockfighting, and if I could have dropped our little friend from the night before in a cage with one of these trained combatants, I’d have probably been a bit it more jovial. The tuk-tuk driver kindly waited for us and took us back to the city, where we had another early night at the Mercy Hostel. At the hostel, we shared a room with a couple of German girls, whom I made sure didn’t get a look at my new tattoo, in fear of having to foolishly explain the meaning. Just after checking in, we received a dreadful message from Brad, advising that he’d come off his moped and had broken his ankle. He was being transported to a hospital in Chiang Mai, and the notion of him meeting back up with us in Cambodia was now sadly dubious.

Bright and early the following morning, just after five o’clock, we were picked up by a mini van which would take us to Huay Xai in Laos, a small town which lies on the Mekong, and acts as the starting point for the two-day slow boat. I took the last seat on the mini van, next to a middle-aged, chatty Swiss man, Marcus, who was halfway through a year-long trip around the world with his wife and their two children. The mother, Marta, was from the Basque Country, so I naturally showed off some of my pidgin Spanish. I took a shine to the kids, and was amazed at their ability to speak English, Spanish, Swiss German and French at ages seven and nine. Marta, from what I could work out, explained to me that her and Marcus had said “fuck it”, quit their jobs, sold their apartment, and taken the kids out of school for a year. I pondered what sort of effect a whole year without education would have on the children, but they were already twice as intelligent as me, so I thought they’d probably be just fine.

We had our first experience of bad weather in almost a month, as rain drops splatted on the windscreen of the mini van whilst we began to pull off the highway to a cafe. The spot acted as a makeshift visa application office, and, by the looks of it, hadn’t changed since the early 1970s. The staff instructed us to fill out our visa forms and offered us a terrible exchange rate for the Laotian Kip. For a brief second we felt like millionaires, as £1 is the equivalent to 27,000 LAK! We were kindly provided with a packed lunch, before being put back on the van and setting course for the “Friendship Bridge” which connects Thailand and Laos.

After a long wait at the border for our passports and visas to be checked and confirmed, we were driven through Huay Xai and down to the “port”. Upon the banks of the river sat several boats, not too dissimilar from the barge boats I’ve seen many a time on the Leeds and Liverpool canal, only much larger in size. We were helped on to the boat by the Laotians and instructed to take off our shoes, before taking a seat and waiting to set sail.

Travelling downstream along this historic river was like stepping back in time. Peacefully passing fishing villages where houses tower over the water on wooden stilts, their inhabitants washing their clothes, crockery, utensils, or simply searching for the next meal by way of fishing. Children playing in the water, waving at us with beaming smiles. Cows, dogs, goats, buffalo - all securing a strategic spot by the riverbed. It’s like nothing had changed for over one-hundred years, but Laos and it’s people has seen so much in the last century, most notably over 260 million bombs fall from the sky, courtesy of the United States Air Force. During the Vietnam War, the US ran a covert operation for a period of nine years, with the goal of interdicting the Ho Chi Minh trail. Operation Barrel Roll gave Laos the unfortunate title of “Most Bombed Country per Capita”. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this kind of military interference has hindered the development of Laos, it’s infrastructure, economy, etc… but I’d put money on the fact that these people in rural fishing villages are happy to live the way they do, I know first-hand, as I’ve never met a happier nation. It’s all smiles in Laos.

We docked up at the small village of Pakbeng at around five o’clock in the evening. We disembarked the boat to find a Laotian lady holding a piece of paper with Mia’s name on it. She would be taking us to the Phonephitak Guest House, where we would spend the evening before setting sail again at around nine o’clock the next morning. She instructed us to climb into the back of a Toyota Hilux pickup truck, along with the luggage of all the other guests. We were joined in the back by two Frenchmen - a lad our age named Theo, and a sixty-something gentleman who Eden affectionately named “Deck It Daryl”. Deck It Daryl earned this nickname by gracelessly clambering into the back of the truck, which set off with just his torso on board. His huge French legs dangled out clumsily as our driver, who was far from sober, dropped the handbrake and began to pull away. Daryl roared for the vehicle to stop until he had pulled his bottom half in, and once he’d done so, we set back off towards the guesthouse.

We pulled up at the hotel, and getting out of the pickup truck was a bit of a difficult task, particularly for Daryl, whom I told to be careful as he was getting down. He seemingly didn’t listen to my advice, as seconds later I turned around to find him flat on the floor, sprawled out, his face pressed against the gravel. He laid like a beetle on its back, but after some deliberation, got to his feet without any help from us, due to the fact we were laughing inconsolably. He caught his breath whilst looking like he’d just finished a shift at a quarry, lit up a cigarette, and stumbled over to the check-in desk. The driver took a liking to Eden, repeatedly asking her age and if she was “legal”. He was taken aback when we lied and said she was thirty-nine, and soon lost interest.

After checking in ourselves, we went for a short walk to see what Pakbeng had to offer. The answer was not much - a few shops selling crisps, water and cigarettes, also offering laundry services, the odd bar, and a couple of bakeries. It was by far the most rural and remote place I’d ever visited, but the French-inspired colonial architecture was pretty and gave a brief insight into Laos’ occupied past. We found ourselves at a bar with Theo and a miserable Englishman named Connor, who made no secret of the fact he was unimpressed by Pakbeng. We had a couple of Beerlaos before calling it a night, in preparation for our early start the next day.

Taunted by roosters throughout the night, we grumpily showered and made our way over to the riverbank to get on the boat. We arrived an hour before the scheduled departure time, in order to secure a comfortable seat at the back. Just before boarding, we spotted a fully grown elephant on the other side of the river being walked by a keeper. It was our first encounter with an elephant on the trip so far, as we’ve been too skeptical to go to one of the many “sanctuaries” in fear that they wouldn’t be ethical. The vessel was much busier than the day before, and departure was delayed by almost an hour, as the crew tried to cram on as many people as possible. Our idea of arriving early soon proved to be ineffective, as despite the fact we managed to claim a seat, our leg room soon became occupied by other backpackers. With about thirty people shoved into the back room, the majority on the floor sat cross-legged, we finally set sail.

A couple of hours into the journey, the boat docked on the riverbank and a family of four Laotians treaded carefully over the rocks to get onto the boat. One of them was having to be carried, presumably injured, and was delicately placed onto the boat. I can only assume he was taking advantage of the daily running slow boat, and used it as a means of transportation from one of the rural villages to the nearest hospital in Luang Prabang. We regularly swapped seats to admire the beautiful mountainous greenery on either side of the riverbed, but when we docked for a second time we were dumbfounded to realise that even more people were getting on. It feels insensitive to compare the experience to a refugee boat, but the chaotic entry of twenty-plus Laotians onto the craft reminded me of the all too familiar news bulletins we see in the UK, of people fleeing conflict to make the treacherous journey across the English Channel.

I was beginning to get a bit pissed off as more and more people crowded around our far from ergonomic seats, particularly when a young Lao man perched on the edge of mine and didn’t have any regard for my ribs as his elbows jabbed me continuously. I was cursing them under my breath - we’d paid £50 each for the package, and I would have loved to have known how much these villagers had paid for the transport to Luang Prabang. Another couple of Lao men sat at my feet cross-legged, again completely disregarding my personal space.

We’d got chatting with a young girl from Nottingham who was also sat at our feet, and the discomfort I was enduring led me to offer to swap places with her for the rest of the journey. We traded places and I sat on the floor with a copy of Hunter S. Thompson’s “Hell’s Angels” in my hands, in desperate need of killing time. I looked up to find the Nottinghamian ripping her pre-packed sandwich in half and handing one of the bisections to the Lao man sat on the floor beside me. His gratitude was boundless, and reminded me where I was. I felt guilty for being so frustrated with them, and we soon followed suit and began to share our snacks with the Laotian contingent. The young man with the sharp elbows grinned immeasurably at the offer of a chocolate biscuit, and showed it off to his friends. We couldn’t leave anyone out, and before we knew it the packet of cookies was empty. Not to worry though, as we also had a grab bag of crisps that were split across the group. Mia suggested getting a beer from the tuck shop on board, to which I was skeptical, given that we couldn’t be affording to get a round in for our Laotian counterparts. She sent me to get three bottles anyway, and when I returned I saw one of the Lao men with a Marlboro Gold hanging out of his mouth, laughing with the girls. God knows where he got that from… I bet they couldn’t believe their luck!

Slightly tipsy, we veered off of the Mekong to the Luang Prabang port, waddled back onto land, and ventured up what seemed like one-thousand steps to the taxi rank. Not for the first time on this trip, and certainly not the last, we were packed into the back of a tuk-tuk with our bags strapped to the roof, and set off towards the centre of this charming former royal capital.