Slow Boat on the Mekong River

I spent two days traveling upstream on the Mekong River from Luang Prabang to Huay Xai where there's a border crossing to Thailand. Not much happened but there was a lot to look at.

Everything on the mountainside is green and nurturing. I recognized coconut palms, banana trees, and teak, but the flora I don't know yet all blended together. There were surprisingly few birds on the river, but it attracts plenty of water buffalo, wild boar, goats, and cattle. I was certain I saw a deer at one point, but the only deer in this part of the world is the critically endangered muntjac. If that's what I saw, it was a lucky sight.

The shoreline alternated between rock formations and sandbars. Unlike road travel in Southeast Asia where you're never very far from roadside businesses, we infrequently saw evidence of people. Occasionally we'd pass a few farms, then a beautiful hillside village built on stilts, but more often we'd see fishing boats in completely isolated areas.

Our first stop on the river was only twenty minutes into our journey, shortly after a woman had come down the aisles to check our tickets. We pulled up to a large sandbar where two local men got out of the boat and stood on the sand, bags in hand, solemnly watching the boat pull away. There was no evidence of a village nearby. It appeared we had abandoned these men in the middle of an inhospitable jungle. The westerners on board were amused and horrified. We speculated about what we just witnessed. Did they not pass the ticket check? Did they break a rule? Are they filming a reality TV show?

As the trip went on, lots of other passengers were dropped off at unmarked jungle sandbars, and every passenger followed the same ritual of solemnly watching the boat drift away. We wondered why they wouldn't either get settled in to wait a while or get started hiking off to their destination. A young German backpacker pointed out the compulsive industriousness of western culture and recognized how funny it was that we were startled by watching a person not do anything. He was quite right. We had all forgone more effective means of travel in pursuit of the romantic appeal of sitting on a boat, enjoying a nice view, and not doing anything, and yet we were all so unaccustomed to this that when we witnessed people adeptly doing nothing, it shocked us enough to require a discussion.

We were reassured when we picked up passengers from a sandbar. The boat doesn't operate on a particularly strict timetable, so they must have been waiting a while. As our journey went on, we realized there were far fewer passengers taking the whole trip to Huay Xai than riding from one rural place to another.

We passed many children playing in remote areas with no village observably nearby. The children would always wave at the boat and the westerners would always wave back. The locals on the boat never waved to the children, but they always smiled at the waving westerners. I suspect they regard us a bit like children. We always need something. We're in a perpetual state of whining. The language barrier prevents any conversation more substantive than that.

An older Norwegian man broke the language barrier, though. A French couple was traveling with their two young children and the Norwegian man initiated a game of making faces with their little boy. Eventually they were playing together, and a local boy intently watched the play. The Norwegian man slowly initiated play between the French boy and the local boy, and as they started to engage with each other, he approached the local boy's mom and showed pictures of his grandchildren at home. As the hours went on, the Norwegian man had formed a little circus of all the kids on the boat. He broke every rule of Lao culture—tousling the kids' hair, tickling them, blowing raspberries on their feet—but the kids were having such fun that the local parents completely warmed up to him and trusted him.

At one village stop, a group of local children boarded our ship like pirates, precariously climbing along the outside of the boat and trying to sell us bracelets. There were no takers, partly because we were all concerned for their safety and partly because they had such an awkwardly stoic and joyless disposition. As the boat started to pull away, they scurried back along the side toward the shore. They didn't have enough time, so many had to jump off of the boat and swim to the shore. This was concerning at first, but as soon as heads came back up above the water, the kids' demeanor changed and they laughed and splashed each other.

After nine hours on the river, we stopped in the little town of Pak Beng to stay the night. No one reported sleeping very well because the town was filled with nocturnal roosters. They got started about 8 pm and crowed all night. The next morning the guesthouse prepared us breakfast and a pack lunch, but I went out to buy some fresh fruit since I had been craving it the day before. To my disappointment, though, we took a different boat which had a limited snack bar, so I spent most of the day hungry.

Late in the afternoon we stopped at a town where a woman got on with local snacks like fried chicken and sticky rice. I only had large bills and she didn't have enough change, so I walked to the back of the boat to request change. She certainly had the change but didn't understand the request. I went back to the front of the boat to see whether I could just buy enough stuff that she had the change, but a local man started producing bills from his wallet. I thought he was making change, but he was actually paying for my food. I was absolutely stunned. I went back to my seat and rifled through my backpack to find some other currency (euros, dong, whatever) that I could repay the man with, but he laughed and waived off the money I brought back. I'm continuously moved by the generosity of the people I meet here.

As we got closer to Thailand, the landscape changed quite a bit and there were many empty hills where forests had been clear cut. I had just gotten cell reception and was responding to a friend's texts when the German woman in front of me expressed grief about the clear cut forest. She went on to talk about a river dolphin on the Mekong that's now critically endangered and that led to a long dissertation about her experience diving with sharks. Between her soft voice, her accent, and the roar of the engines, it was very difficult to understand her. She had been very friendly throughout the trip so I felt obligated to listen, but this lecture was more tedious to endure than the previous 18 hours of boating.

All things considered, the Mekong River was one of the more rewarding experiences I've had in Southeast Asia despite so little happening. I'm watching the time pass and starting to feel a bit anxious about getting to my meditation retreat in the south of Thailand. I wanted to get the bulk of my travel done first, but I want to make sure I don't miss that experience.

Next stop: Chiang Mai via Chiang Rai.