The Rhythm of the River – Two Days on the Mekong

Traveling from Northern Thailand to Laos, we were faced with a handful of options.

1. A flight — too expensive and we’re not in any big hurry;
2. Overnight buses — uncomfortable, unreliable, and doesn’t allow you to appreciate the beautiful scenery in this part of the world;
3. Speedboat down the Mekong — you’re given a helmet when you board and every book or blog I read warned about how dangerous they are.  Our guide said he lost three teeth when one of these boats disintegrated after hitting a log.;
4. Two-day public slow boat down the river (the “backpackers ferry”) — inexpensive and safe, but I had read horror stories about how they cram 100 people into a ferry meant for 40, hard seats, mad dash at the halfway point for hostel rooms, etc.;
5. A private slow boat, Nagi of Mekong, which, like the public ferry, takes two days to travel from the Thailand-Laos border to Luang Prabang, but in more comfort and with more elbow room.

We ultimately went with the last option.  Isn’t it incredible that there are little corners left of the world where the most practical option for visiting them is a two-day boat trip?  Or where you cross a major border on tired old longboats?  The engine on our longboat puttered out exactly halfway across the river, leaving us floating down the demarcation line between Thailand and Laos with a vehicle ferry oncoming!

After crossing into the People’s Democratic Republic of Laos (our first Communist country), we boarded the Nagi boat for our two-day journey down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang.  As a friend once told us, there is a rhythm to life on the river.  Here, at least, the Mekong is still a thrumming and bustling commercial highway.  We passed large ferries hauling semi trucks and boats piled high with produce zipping up and down the river with us.  That is likely to change in a few years when the Chinese complete their high speed rail line through Laos.  For now, we got to float past stunning limestone karsts, ancient forests, kids bathing on the bank, remote stilt villages, elephants hauling big bags of rice up the hills — the way Laos has probably looked for centuries.

 

For people contemplating the same journey, we had no complaints with Nagi.  The company offers a teak boat with old car seats bolted down to the floor, a Lao guide, assistance with the (confusing) Lao immigration process, hot lunch both days, and prearranged accomodation at Pak Bang, the halfway point of the trip.  As a bonus, after our guide got us settled in Pak Bang, he took us to a restaurant and led us in a Lao drinking game.  Ready to play?  You place a chicken head between two bowls, shake it all around, lift the top bowl (voila!), and whoever its dead little beak points to has to take a shot of Lao-Lao, the local moonshine.

 

Nagi also includes a visit to the Pak Ou caves, a local shrine where people have dropped off hundreds of unwanted Buddha statues.  This may be insensitive, but after some of the incredible wats we’ve seen, we weren’t too impressed with Pak Ou.

 

Still, we’re of two minds about whether we should have taken the public ferry.  Nagi cost about $150 per person, a bargain we’d have jumped on if this were a normal vacation.  (It also fit within our average budget for the duration of the trip, though we’re shooting lower in SE Asia.)  But the public boat didn’t look too different from ours, we’d have gotten there early enough to nab a seat, met people closer to our own age, and could have figured out the rest.  Most importantly, the public boat was only $30 a person.  On the other hand, we got more perks and likely had a more relaxing trip with the private boat.  We include this information here to help other travelers make the right decision for their needs and budgets.

 

If you’re going to do the public boat, here are some tips.  You don’t need a cushion (as we’d read.  The ferry has car or bus-type seats).  But you do need to get there early.  We talked to some stragglers who ended up sitting in the engine room.  If we’d done it, we’d have crossed to Huay Xai the afternoon before and bought our tickets morning-of at the dock before everyone making their way across the border from Thailand got there.

 

Still, floating miles down and centuries back on one of the world’s most storied rivers — what a thrill.  A perfect illustration that it’s about the journey, not the destination.