Let the adventure begin! And again I was going to travel without any plan. I booked trip to Laos, then spent there more than 14 days with my small humble backpack. I had two underpants, two t-shirt and few things for personal hygiene. The point was to be completely mobile without any extra useless crap which I would carry and it was even quite practical. I was washing my clothes regularly every two days so keep maintain everything nicely clean. I remember how every traveler always had to ask me “that’s all you have? Seriously?” me “sure why not?” ha-ha after their little confusion I explained that most of the things I left in Chiang Mai. The trip should start with transportation by bus from Chiang Mai, first stop Chiang Rai to check white temple, very nice by the way, later spend one night in Chiang Kong and then at next day continue with our transport to Thailand – Lao borders. From there continue to so call “slowboat” (actually it’s not very slow, just… differentJ). Next stop Pak Beng a then continue at other day to Luang Prabang.
On morning bus came pick me up at hotel. We left Chiang Mai and soon we came to Chiang Rai stop nearby The White Temple. The stop in Chang Rai was only for 20 minutes then we continued to small town named Chiang Kong where we spent overnight. It was great that everything there was included, food and hotel too. The hotel was made mainly from wood which was nice and inside the room was queen size comfortable bed. During evening all of us of our group had nice lunch where meanwhile we introduced ourselves and little bit more getting to known each other. Our group were eight people if I remember correctly, which were most of the time together since beginning.
At the next day we were heading finally to Huay Xai – Thailand & Lao borders. After check out passport on Thailand side we had to apply for visa to entry Laos. Funny was nobody had idea how much who will pay because it depends on country of your residence and it wasn’t really logical. Later we talked about the fee and we came to conclusion that for those which are from Canada paid most. Normally it costs 30 dollars but there were some exceptions for some countries when they had to pay 35 dollars or even better, especially for Canadians which had to pay 40 dollars. Why? Who knows... After we crossed borders we switched buses and went ahead. Later we came to port nearby Mekong River, were where many old, small boats or bigger transport ships. Some guy introduce us to situation which boat we have to take and how long the trip will take. Then surprisingly he took us passports. Yeah, at first moment I was hesitating but then I saw a lot of people gave him passport so did it too. We were confused at beginning but then he explained that they had to check them if everything is ok with passengers.
Finally after we get back passports we could board on the ship, oh I mean boat… slowboat. The journey was spectacular, I not even mentioned that it was my first experience with the Mekong river or longtime trip with boat. I saw many interesting things during this trip. We were surrounded by nature, houses, people from both sides, one side Laos and other represented Thailand. But that was only for short time, later we lost sign of Thai shore. During the time on boat I met some new friends, especially one guy from Netherlands spent some time with me talking. We talked for hours, conversation about existence, philosophy and so onJ. It helped to kill time too. First day after eight hours of travel by boat we stopped in town Pak Beng where we were going to spend another night. The town was quite surprisingly full of restaurants, Indian or other foreigner cuisines wasn’t problem to find. We tried the Indian restaurant and it was delicious. We went sleep sooner because tomorrow on morning another trip on the Mekong River awaited us. This time it took more than seven hours since we finally reached our destination – Luang Prabang.
But that adventure story is for next time…
Full gallery here