Mark and Sue's Big Adventure: 23rd December 2006

Tourist visa's last 60 days and then you have to leave the country. Our first 60 days ran out on the 17th December so we booked to go to Luang Prabang in Laos. 7 Hour bus journey up up up to Chiang Khong on the border. Then a 2 day river trip down the Mekong to Luang Prabang, a bit like a very long water slide. The Mekong is the 12th longest river in the world, it starts in Tibet and goes out into the South China Sea in Vietnam a distance of 3000 miles, we covered about 100 miles.
We stayed over night in Chiang Khong on the banks of the Mekong, looking at Laos on the other side.

Next day after lots of stamping of visas and official posturing we got on the boat and sat down on a wooden bench (we had bought a cushion each for 50 baht) on the shady side, I had cleverly worked this out in advance so we didn't get too hot, what a mistake that turned out to be.

There was a group of 20+ year olds who took over the space at the front of the boat. One in particular caught my eye, lets call him Mr Personality. He spent the whole two days being the centre of attention within the group, photographing and being photographed at every available
opportunity (do I sound bitter?!).

The first day we were in the boat 6 hours, left at 12.00 and arrived at 6.00pm freezing cold, after about 4.00pm the wind got up and everyone got all the clothes they could find out of their bags to put on. We had decided to travel light and left all the heavy warm stuff back in Chiang Mai. We stopped overnigt at Pak Beng where the electricity comes on at 6.00pm (when the boats arrive) and goes off again at 9.00 (when we all go to bed), wierd - candles everywhere, restaurants all trying to tempt us in, the heady smell of marijuana and the sound of generators.

We dreaded the next day but in the event it was much better, warmer, better
seats and we sat on the sunny side.

We saw a dead body floating down the river (what!). It was high in the water and face down. I remember that the foot was moving up and down in the wake as the boat passed by. The reaction on the boat was one of disbelief. "What's that?" "Was that a dead body?" "Did you see that?" and then everyone went quiet. The driver gave it a wide berth but there was no change in the engine noise and we just carried on. A couple of minutes later we passed some fishermen on the bank. I wondered how they would react when 'it' passed by.
Dead body, why do we call it that? Why not a dead man or dead woman, do we want to disassociate ourselves so quickly from thoughts of death that we talk about 'a' dead body as though 'it' has nothing to do with us anymore. "We saw 'a' live body in the river and the driver pulled over so we could rescue 'it'." It was a surreal experience.

Luang Pra Bang was beautiful, no traffic but cold.

We bumped into Mr Personality (and entourage) at a waterfall outside the city and on top of a hill looking round a Wat. He was really nice (he would be wouldn't he, why can't he just give me one reason to despise him). He was also going to the airport at the same time as us, but he was catching a plane to Bangkok thank goodness. I think the real reason why I didn't like him was because I don't like competition.