Today was the start of my trek into Laos. The target is Luang Prabang, but it will take a couple of days to get there. I have read and heard about the river trips in Laos, which are meant to be breath-taking, so rather than taking the 2 day boat straight to Luang Prabang from the border, I am travelling, with Francois and Lisa, North to Luang Nam Tha and then back south to Nong Khiew and then a 7 hour boat ride to Luang Prabang.
The trip to the border (Chiang Khong) was a little bumpy. As the bus got closer, the road conditions really did start to deteriorate. I have heard that the Laos roads are some of the worst in the region so I guess this is a good warm up!!
When I got to Chiang Khong, the Thai border, things went very smoothly. I simply filled out my departure card that was issued when I came into Thailand and got on a boat! 5 minutes and we were done!!
The crossing to Laos is via the Mekong river, so it only takes about 5 minutes. On the Laos side, which sets you down in Huay Xai, things were just as simple. Fill in the arrival card, pay the immigration officer US$36, give him a passport photo and voila, a 30 day visa! Unfortunately I didn’t get a nice sticker in my passport, which the others had by pre- booking. You have to pay an extra US$15 an d pre-arrange it for the sticker visa. Never mind. It’s really not that important!
As soon as we got into Huay Xai we looked into getting a bus or boat to Luang Nam Tha, which was meant to be our first stopover. The next bus / boat was leaving in the morning, so that pretty much decided that we were staying in Huay Xai for one night.
We went to find a guesthouse in town so that we could drop our bags off, then come back to book our bus or boat. We found a nice guesthouse called XXXXXXX and checked in.
The rooms were basic, with a fan (no air-con) but were clean and more than adequate for a night. It did have a nice roof terrace where you can sit, drink a Beerlao (the local brand of beer) and take in the river views.
The ticket office where we booked our bus / boat ticket closed at 6pm so we decided to pop down and get that sorted. We were pretty starving at this time as we hadn’t really eaten since breakfast, apart from a bag of crisps and some crackers, so after booking our ticket food was the top priority!
There are 2 options when taking the boat, there is the slow boat which takes around 2 days, or the speed boat which takes about 6 hours. After reading in the Lonely planet and hearing from other travellers that the speed boat is for true adrenaline junkies only and crashes on a regular basis (yes, it does hurt when it crashes.. quite badly for some) we decided that the speed boat was not really an option!
If we wanted to take the 2 day boat, rather than the bus, then we would have to get a group of about 10 people together. There was 3 of us already, and the ticket office closed in about an hour. We had a quick walk around town to see if we could rustle up a few more travellers to fill the boat up. Unfortunately there wasn’t enough people around to make up numbers. Most people we met were taking the bus to Luang Prabang or travelling in the other direction. So, a bus to Luang Nam Tha it is.
Huay Xai is a very small town, population about 15,500. Although it is small, it is well catered to the large number of tourists that pass through from Thailand. It is not as busy at the moment as we are in the middle of the low season, but that has been the case ever since I got to Thailand and will be the case the entire way through my trip.
We sat down for some dinner at a restaurant over the road from our guesthouse and ordered. At last.. a proper meal! There was a girl sitting on her own on the table next to us, so I asked if she would like to join us. I know how it feels when you are travelling on your own and, especially eating on your own, when you can see groups of people around you and you just want to be invited over. She was very happy when I asked, which made me feel good. She turned out to be a lovely Polish girl called Ania and was also taking the same route as us, up to Luang Nam Tha and then back down to Luang Prabang. When she found out we were on the same bus she was so happy to be able to travel with us.
Everywhere in town appeared to close at about 10pm, so it turned out to be an early night, which was fine as we had done a lot of travelling today and we were all pretty tired.