Pakbeng

Not too tough to face this view for two days
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The last thing our last guide said (remember Nong?) as he drove out of sight was “the guide will pick you up at 6.30am in four days to take you to the boat.” We’ve not heard from his tour company and know nothing about our next step other than the fact that we’re taking a boat up river. At 6.20, we call the tour company and nobody answers so we begin to make arrangements to get to the dock and see what’s up. At 6.30, there’s a call from the guide saying he’s running a little late but we have plenty of time. In fact, when we get to the dock, we discover they’re waiting – just for us. It’s a private cruise up river (the less popular way to begin with) during this decidedly off-season. A single plank is extended, a bamboo pole is held by two crew members to act as a handrail, we jump on and off we go.

Forty five in the Cave of a Thousand make that ten thousand.
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Our day passes pleasantly enough on the mighty murky, muddy Mekong that crashes down from China through Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia to Vietnam and its famous delta. Laotians complain that the Chinese, with the completion of the Three Gorges Dam and the plan to drown seven more gorges, have tapped one of the few natural resources available in this tiny, powerless, landlocked country.

A termite’s crawled into my ear and it’s burrowing in!

Working for peanuts during the low tide season on the Mekong.
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The Luang Say Company plies the Mekong between Luang Prabang and Houeisay –on the border with Thailand -- in grand, thumping luxury barges that hold around 40 passengers. We have a crew of about eight, and we’re carrying a few of their family members to the lodge halfway, but other than that, we have the run of the boat. Certainly, we see plenty of cheaper tourist boats chugging downstream -- the quicker trip by several hours because the boat sails with the current – and they’re full to overflowing with backpackers saving money and doing our trip the rough way. Good luck to them!

Hmmm. Is pink the new black for Mekong buffaloes?
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Smaller and simpler than the Halong Bay junks, still this boat seems cut from the same cloth, with its open bow, fancy balustrade, and bar at the back. On a shelf under the table are well-worn, reliable old wooden chess, checkers, domino and backgammon sets. We imagine the boat packed to the gills in high season and shudder. While fellow travelers might have been entertaining, this lone trip is fun in a surreal way. And the boat has to take the journey regardless so it can turn right around and come back down.

Those who fish commute down river to check the nets.
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For the captain, this time just before the monsoon season is a chance to show why he earns the big bucks, navigating this wood monster with its (thankfully) steel hull, back and forth between the banks, ploughing through eddies and Class II rapids, avoiding knife-sharp, scissor-jagged rock pinnacles just beneath the water’s surface. He has no sonar, radar, GPS or even a map. It’s all in his head, every kilometer of river between Luang Prabang and the Thai border crossing and the water surface changes every day based on rains and the whim of the Chinese. Why not a shallow bottomed boat? “Too slow,” he says. Yes, we understand, as it’s two full days ride as it is. There is an alternative. Jet boats do the trip in 6 hours. A few scream past us, the passengers wearing full-face motorcycle helmets apparently for wind and ear protection. But as we loll about with our coffee and Travel Scrabble, we imagine playing a game in a jet boat with tiles being whipped off into the foam every time we  try to form a pithy word. We agree we’d all lose a few mm. of tooth enamel in those 6 hours.

On the bow, just a flowerpot separates us from the drink.
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So before dusk, we pull in at Pakbeng and take a leisurely walk through town to the Luang Say Lodge, which is nestled on the fringe of the jungle and overlooks the river. The sumptuously appointed cabins are set on teak poles and separated from each other by long wooden walkways. Are there creatures on the ground we might not want to have pay a visit tonight? Open the shutters and you’re greeted by a view that is so splendidly foreign it sets off one of those thrilling “I can’t believe we’re in Laos!” moments. The weather is pleasantly warm and there’s an occasional spitting rain, which means that the insects are waiting in the wings.

OMG! I cant believe were in Laos!
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Dinner is served al fresco in the beautifully expansive open air restaurant, which shines like a beacon on the jungle’s edge, its illumination attracting every winged creature this side of Burma that’s waited 8 months for the rainy season and is ready to partay. Hilariously, we’re dive-bombed by giant moths and beetles whose wings clack and clatter, who thrum through the dining room like old World War II bombers till they crash suicidally into our Beer Lao or the coconut curry. My hair is particularly attractive to the crickets and termites and, after a while, I stop bothering them unless they’re actually crawling on my skin or across the particular mound of sticky rice that’s about to enter my mouth. Henry misses dinner completely due to insect overload.  He declares that he is pathetic and understands why the tropically-attuned staff is laughing at his break-dance-like moves around the room. “I’d laugh at me too!” he muses. We retreat to our cabin and keep the lights off in hopes of a restful sleep.

Eating al fresco presents problems at the Luang Say Lodge.
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“A termite’s crawled into my ear and it’s burrowing in!” I am dead asleep inside the mosquito net when Andy wakes me in a bug-induced panic. (Doubtless the bug was equally distressed.) California is blessed, disturbingly enough, with so few insects that its natives call the entire genus bugs because that’s what they do. (The insects might call us kills.) The nocturnal challenge is solved with a cotton bud applied deftly to the ear, murdering the poor confused insect which, luckily for Andy, had no stinger.

Six inches wide and looking like a scary mask, this moth holds court in the insect-filled restaurant.
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Happily, morning finds the insects exhausted from their carousing. We eat breakfast in peace and our guide leads us down to the boat as the captain guns the engine again. There are actually two docks here; one at the bottom of the lodge steps and another a stroll away across the dunes. Today, peanut plants grow near the water’s edge but when monsoon season is in full swing, the river claims the dunes.

Our guide is a bit of a study. Methinks he fancies himself as quite the smoothie. It’s tiring to give him the attention his richly accented diatribes demand. He carries his body in the signature styles of self-proclaimed debonair bores I n any culture. He rubs his hands together, inclines his head and closes his eyes as he intones. He smiles to himself before he gets to his well-rehearsed punch lines. In the cheesy Cave of a Thousand Buddhas, he tells us, “This the Buddha image is often in the attitude of Calling for the Rain. But here in Laos we don’t need this. The cave that we see flooded in the year of 1966. See this is the line right here?” Or how about, “The Laos this is meaning the Land of a Million Elephants but (smile here) we don’t have seem to be that many now.” He takes a long time to say not much badly and we find ourselves smiling a little too widely.

Plying upriver through restive water without a map or GPS.
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And so our second day passes easily, between Scrabble and Yahtzee and reading and day dreaming and watching the churning waters and fascinating riverside rocks, cut through by this powerful waterway. Slowing down as we did in Luang Prabang gave us a head start for this strange riverboat ride.