Once I got into Laos, I took the locally famous 2 day slow boat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang. I had heard about this boat ride from various other tourists and it sounded pretty interesting to me because I hadn't been on a boat in awhile and wanted to mix up the forms of transportation a bit, rather than be stuck on another bus for hours and hours. I knew about Luang Prabang because it's probably the most visited town in Laos by tourists, so the boat was a good way to get there.
It was a beautiful boat ride and I'm really happy I decided to make it happen. You're basically on the boat for about 5 hours the first day as the river meanders its way through the lush green mountains of northern Laos, dotted with small river villages and communities that you would otherwise never even know existed. At the end of the first day, you stop in the small sleepy town of Pakbeng, which basically thrives almost solely on these boat rides. It's the only place where you can sleep for the night, so you get off the boat, find a guesthouse and some food and drinks, then call it a night and get up early the next morning to catch the boat again for day 2. On day 2, the boat trip is about 6 hours with more beautiful scenery before you finally arrive in Luang Prabang.
Overall, the trip was extremely scenic and I'm really happy I did it. 11 hours in two days on a boat is a little long, but I still think it's worth it and would recommend it to people, especially if you have a good group to go with and you wanna bring some drinks along the way :) I was happy to finally be in Luang Prabang and see what this little town was all about.
Luang Prabang is a pretty amazing little place. It's the most visited town in Laos for a reason, and has a pretty incredible charm to it. It's one of those places where you just get there and walk around and enjoy the vibes of the place. There's a night market and a nice hill that you can climb to get some great views of the area, and of course there's a beautiful waterfall about an hour out of town that you can see. Overall, it was probably one of the nicest places I visited in SE Asia and I would recommend it to anyone to check out if they're ever in the area.
After Luang Prabang, a French guy I met, Vincent, and I teamed up and went down to Vang Vieng, which is another small backpacker town a few hours away via extremely windy and horrible roads. It was probably the worst road I've ever been on in my life. Extremely windy and bumpy for a solid 6 hours. It sent me airborne in the back of the minibus countless times and I absolutely could not wait to get out of there. When we finally made it we were pretty exhausted. Vang Vieng is well-known for being a party town, so when we got in late everyone was out drinking and it was a little entertaining to see the state that everyone was in when we arrived sober looking for a place to stay. We were too exhausted to join the crowds so we just showed up to a guest house, woke up the owner to ask for a couple beds, and slept in the hallway before getting an actual room the next night.
Vang Vieng provided me with quite an experience.. That next day we decided to rent motorbikes because Vincent knew of a nice loop to do around some villages outside of town that would give us a good glimpse of the area and take up most of the day. The semi-automatic bikes were half the price of the automatic ones, so even though we didn't have any experience using one before, we decided to wing it and rent a couple bikes for the day. It definitely took some getting used to, but after an hour or so of riding around we got the hang of it pretty easily. The catch here was that it was rainy season. And it would rain pretty consistently throughout the day each day, especially in northern Laos. So when we embarked on this loop it wasn't long after setting out that the roads quickly turned to dirt. But with heavy, interspersed rain storms the dirt turned into mud... a lot of mud.
There was so much mud that I ended up slipping out early on in the drive. The left side of my body was covered in mud but I was fine, however, it looked like my bike had leaked some oil. We rode on and asked some local people nearby for a place that we could get the bike looked at. When we got to a place, we tried to explain the situation to some of the local people but they couldn't understand. Coincidentally, the place we stopped at was at the entrance of a short hike Vincent had read about. So we gave up on getting the bike looked at and went for a hike. We got to the top of the hike and had some amazing views. After that we were feeling pretty good and decided to keep going and hoped that my bike would hold up.
We kept going on the horrible, muddy, and slippery road, got lunch at a small local joint, and continued on. We were at least getting more comfortable driving on the muddy roads, and as we continued a local Lao guy rode alongside us and invited us to have a drink with him. We thought, "why not?" and agreed. So we followed him for a bit on the road and finally stopped at a place to grab a couple beers. This was a really nice guy. We chatted for awhile about Lao culture and learned a bit of the language. He was a tour guide and rents out kayaks to foreigners while taking them out on the river. He just finished up for the day when he invited us for some drinks. We had a great time with him. So good, in fact, that we had probably stayed a little longer than we should have and got a late start to head back to Vang Vieng. The guy suggested that we keep going and complete the loop, as it would be faster than doubling back the way we came. So we decided to continue, and it wasn't long after we started off that it began to get dark. This is when things would get interesting.
So it starts getting dark, the rain continues to fall in heavy bursts, and we continue down this stupid road in the mud and rain. Vincent suddenly mentions that his bike is running really low on gas, so we've got to keep an eye out for a place to fill up (which is very scarce where we're at). We ended up completing a small portion of the loop and got to a place where we needed to double back to get back into town. I remembered seeing a gas station a bit down the road on the loop we came from, so I go on to find it and ask for some gas while Vincent waits behind. It started to rain extremely heavily at this point and the road conditions weren't improving. It was also completely dark now. I couldn't find the gas station so I turned around and finally caught up to Vincent. It wasn't long after this when my bike suddenly won't go anymore. I didn't know what was wrong with it but it stopped working just before I got to Vincent. So I walked the rest of the way back to him and told him about it. We were in a pretty bad spot at this point.
We found someone to take a look at my bike and he pointed out that the chain had just come off on the back tire. So a quick reset fixed the problem and I was extremely happy now. We continued on the road but only for a few minutes before the chain popped back off again. This was disappointing, but it wasn't hard to reset and continue on. But then it happened again and again, and now we were beginning to worry a bit. Then it happened to Vincent's bike, and now things were really looking bad. His chain was not accessible from the outside, as it had a protective plate covering it. And to make things worse, the next time my chain came off it was on the front, which was also inaccessible from the outside. So we had two bikes with chain issues, one of them nearly out of gas, and we were stuck walking on the muddy roads in the pouring rain at about 10:30pm somewhere outside of Vang Vieng, still much too far to walk.
So now the only option was to basically leave the bikes on the side of the road and walk to a nearby village to find someone to call a tuk tuk for us and give us a lift back into town and grab the bikes in the morning. So we left the bikes on the side of the road and just as we began walking to the nearby village, a car came. Better yet, it was a pickup truck, and a godsend. Vincent waved the truck down and we explained to him what was going on. He spoke enough English to help us out, so long as we paid him for it. So we threw the bikes on the back, hopped in the truck, and miraculously got ourselves a ride back into town. It was the best possible thing that could have happened, and I was so happy and relieved when we got back. I couldn't believe it, and properly celebrated that night. The whole thing really sucked at the time but obviously looking back at it, it was one of the more memorable stories that I'll have of the trip as being a very bad situation that we somehow got ourselves out of.
After that interesting day in Vang Vieng I was ready to leave the next day and hopped on a bus to the capital, Vientiane, where I found someone to couchsurf with for a couple days.
It was a beautiful boat ride and I'm really happy I decided to make it happen. You're basically on the boat for about 5 hours the first day as the river meanders its way through the lush green mountains of northern Laos, dotted with small river villages and communities that you would otherwise never even know existed. At the end of the first day, you stop in the small sleepy town of Pakbeng, which basically thrives almost solely on these boat rides. It's the only place where you can sleep for the night, so you get off the boat, find a guesthouse and some food and drinks, then call it a night and get up early the next morning to catch the boat again for day 2. On day 2, the boat trip is about 6 hours with more beautiful scenery before you finally arrive in Luang Prabang.
 |
| The slow boat lineup, with Thailand sitting on the other side of the Mekong river. I spent the better part of two days on one of these bad boys. |
Luang Prabang is a pretty amazing little place. It's the most visited town in Laos for a reason, and has a pretty incredible charm to it. It's one of those places where you just get there and walk around and enjoy the vibes of the place. There's a night market and a nice hill that you can climb to get some great views of the area, and of course there's a beautiful waterfall about an hour out of town that you can see. Overall, it was probably one of the nicest places I visited in SE Asia and I would recommend it to anyone to check out if they're ever in the area.
After Luang Prabang, a French guy I met, Vincent, and I teamed up and went down to Vang Vieng, which is another small backpacker town a few hours away via extremely windy and horrible roads. It was probably the worst road I've ever been on in my life. Extremely windy and bumpy for a solid 6 hours. It sent me airborne in the back of the minibus countless times and I absolutely could not wait to get out of there. When we finally made it we were pretty exhausted. Vang Vieng is well-known for being a party town, so when we got in late everyone was out drinking and it was a little entertaining to see the state that everyone was in when we arrived sober looking for a place to stay. We were too exhausted to join the crowds so we just showed up to a guest house, woke up the owner to ask for a couple beds, and slept in the hallway before getting an actual room the next night.
Vang Vieng provided me with quite an experience.. That next day we decided to rent motorbikes because Vincent knew of a nice loop to do around some villages outside of town that would give us a good glimpse of the area and take up most of the day. The semi-automatic bikes were half the price of the automatic ones, so even though we didn't have any experience using one before, we decided to wing it and rent a couple bikes for the day. It definitely took some getting used to, but after an hour or so of riding around we got the hang of it pretty easily. The catch here was that it was rainy season. And it would rain pretty consistently throughout the day each day, especially in northern Laos. So when we embarked on this loop it wasn't long after setting out that the roads quickly turned to dirt. But with heavy, interspersed rain storms the dirt turned into mud... a lot of mud.
 |
| One of the better-conditioned parts of the horrible, muddy road we spent most of our day on... |
We kept going on the horrible, muddy, and slippery road, got lunch at a small local joint, and continued on. We were at least getting more comfortable driving on the muddy roads, and as we continued a local Lao guy rode alongside us and invited us to have a drink with him. We thought, "why not?" and agreed. So we followed him for a bit on the road and finally stopped at a place to grab a couple beers. This was a really nice guy. We chatted for awhile about Lao culture and learned a bit of the language. He was a tour guide and rents out kayaks to foreigners while taking them out on the river. He just finished up for the day when he invited us for some drinks. We had a great time with him. So good, in fact, that we had probably stayed a little longer than we should have and got a late start to head back to Vang Vieng. The guy suggested that we keep going and complete the loop, as it would be faster than doubling back the way we came. So we decided to continue, and it wasn't long after we started off that it began to get dark. This is when things would get interesting.
So it starts getting dark, the rain continues to fall in heavy bursts, and we continue down this stupid road in the mud and rain. Vincent suddenly mentions that his bike is running really low on gas, so we've got to keep an eye out for a place to fill up (which is very scarce where we're at). We ended up completing a small portion of the loop and got to a place where we needed to double back to get back into town. I remembered seeing a gas station a bit down the road on the loop we came from, so I go on to find it and ask for some gas while Vincent waits behind. It started to rain extremely heavily at this point and the road conditions weren't improving. It was also completely dark now. I couldn't find the gas station so I turned around and finally caught up to Vincent. It wasn't long after this when my bike suddenly won't go anymore. I didn't know what was wrong with it but it stopped working just before I got to Vincent. So I walked the rest of the way back to him and told him about it. We were in a pretty bad spot at this point.
 |
| One of the amazing views we got during the day that made at least part of this motorbike trip worthwhile. |
So now the only option was to basically leave the bikes on the side of the road and walk to a nearby village to find someone to call a tuk tuk for us and give us a lift back into town and grab the bikes in the morning. So we left the bikes on the side of the road and just as we began walking to the nearby village, a car came. Better yet, it was a pickup truck, and a godsend. Vincent waved the truck down and we explained to him what was going on. He spoke enough English to help us out, so long as we paid him for it. So we threw the bikes on the back, hopped in the truck, and miraculously got ourselves a ride back into town. It was the best possible thing that could have happened, and I was so happy and relieved when we got back. I couldn't believe it, and properly celebrated that night. The whole thing really sucked at the time but obviously looking back at it, it was one of the more memorable stories that I'll have of the trip as being a very bad situation that we somehow got ourselves out of.
After that interesting day in Vang Vieng I was ready to leave the next day and hopped on a bus to the capital, Vientiane, where I found someone to couchsurf with for a couple days.
0 comments:
Post a Comment