Ooooh, my butt hurts

Feb 13/07

This is the beginning of my two day slow boat trip up the Mekong River to Huay Xai. The slow boat is slow. It provides a lot of opportunity to admire the beautiful scenery, wave to the kids on shore, read, write and sit on very uncomfortable seats. Imagine old-fashioned wooden church pews, with very narrow seats and straight ladder backs. After about 1 hour, my butt was numb. The hard cotton cushion didn't seem to make any difference. The Mekong River was amazing. It's incredibly wide, and the flood marks are high. I can't imagine what it would look at in wet season, but it must be magnificent.

I finished one book,talked to a number of people, and met a couple who were also going to be on the Gibbon Experience the same days as me (Mike and Nicole).

We arrived in Pak Beng around 6:00, the stop over place for the night. The village is small and set high up the bank of the river, so we had to haul all the luggage up the hill. During dinner, we had a reminder we were in a small town when the generator went down, plunging the block into complete darkness. It was up again in a minute, but I wouldn't want to be out past 10:30, when they shut down for the night.

Feb 14/07

Happy Valentine's Day. Back to the boat. More sore butt, and another long day. Same same as yesterday.

We got in around 6:30, and the 3 of us checked in at the Gibbon Experience office first. Then we went to a guesthouse where we were lucky to get a triple room. I'm sure they were really happy to share on Valentine's Day. We spent a lot of time packing and re-packing our luggage with what we'd need for the next 3 days, and getting our big packs ready to store.