Too Many Slow Boats in Laos

a warm interlude on the first boat north. look at those winter clothes!
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After 6 days umming and aahhing about how to get to Vietnam (our original plan of taking the plane from Vientiane was looking a bit expensive, and the bus down there was 12 hours anyway)  we decided on heading north up the Nam Ou river in a 3 legged trip, and then over the border to Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam, and a further bus from there down to Hanoi.

Overall the trip took us 5 days, but we had a couple of nice stops in Nong Khiaw and Muang Ngoi.

Lots of big karst

river life number 1
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First stop was the little town of Nong Khiaw straddling the Nam Ou river 80kms north of Louang Prabang.  Quite a popular backpacker stopover place as buses and boats from here seem to go in all directions.  The trip up here was very slow, our driver only seemed to turn his engine up to full power when we were going past his friends about 200 metres from the pier at the end of the day.  We were told it might take 4 or 6 or 7 hours, it took about 9 and a half, including stops for the driver and his family to wash in the river, although this was a welcome break from the cold wind and numbing wooden seats.

more river life
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In Nong Khiaw we had some very nice curries in Deen's Restaurant, tasted just like home.  We also went for a walk out to some caves in the limestone rock where the locals lived during the American (i.e. Vietnam) war.  During the war Laos took a real pounding as the Americans (and French) believed that a lot of Vietnamese were seeking refuge in Laos, they probably were, but lots of civilians were killed in the process of finding out, and around 300 people are still being injured or killed every year when they are unlucky enough to find bombs from the war that failed to detonate first time around.

the family that owned our boat. we got to watch them take a bath. no extra cost!
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The scenery around Nong Khiaw, and in fact for our whole journey to Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam was pretty spectacular.  Lots of big karst limestone lumps, covevered in greenery.  Beautiful.

Only 1 hour up river from Nong Khiaw is Muang Ngoi, a much smaller village on the east side of the river.  We found ourselves a little bungalow overlooking the river with a hammock for $3 a night and settled in.  Muang Ngoi had been described to us as being overly touristy, but we found the balance between locals and foreigners just right.  We spent half a day lolling in the hammock and walking up and down the dusty main street trying to dodge the ducks, puppies and cock fights (not real cock fights, just fighting cocks, if you know what I mean).

misty morning in nong kiaw (excuse the spelling , this is all from memory
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Next day we went on a walk out of town up through the paddy fields to a neighbouring village, really, really pretty, even though the rice beds were empty and brown.  Had a tin of sprite each in a restaurant in the village, and had a chat with the owner who has been learning English by talking to tourists at his bar since it opened 5 years ago, he has a pretty impressive vocabulary considering, and it was interesting to hear how his business was going, and about the taxman who was in his village that week working out how much everyone should pay that year based on the size of their properties, and whether they had electricity and a television.

same same, but different
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Another long boat trip up to our last stop on the river, Muang Khuaw.  This time the 6 hour journey took just 4, we were pretty relieved, as although it was really scenic, the hard seats were really taking their toll by now.  Muang Khuaw is easily the biggest town we've been to that doesn't have full-time electricity, in fact the 20,000 inhabitants only get electricity for the first 4 hours after dark. This meant that the guesthouses and restaurants (and I guess the weathlier houses) all had a second electrical circuit in their buildings that ran off individual hydro-electric power generating things that they put in the fast-flowing river and then wire back up to their houses, clever stuff.

water buffalo in the fields near muong noi
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A quick over night stop in the Nam Ou guesthouse before hopping over the river to catch the 7am bus for Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam.    This bus was supposed to take 3 hours and cost $11, luckily it only cost half that, but sadly took about 3 times as long.  And I don't think it could have gone any quicker over the 120kms of rough and twisty road.  We stopped for over an hour at the border, but I got the impression that this was not extraordinary.

Most interesting thing about the bus ride was the variety of luggage on the bus, in addition to the trussed (but still alive) pig picked up by its ears and put in the hold under the bus, and the 8 chickens (7 in a bag, and one that was just thrown on by a small boy that had to be caught and tied up by the multi-tasking conductor) that joined us on board were several big bags of sawdust and around 600 cans of Red Bull, the pig didn't get off even when we arrived at the final bus station, but the sawdust and Red Bull all disembarked at a surprisingly fancy house in the middle of nowhere.  And to think that our guidebook says that there is a lot of smuggling over this border crossing, I'm sure they wouldn't use the local bus to do it, becuase transporting that much sawdust and Red Bull makes perfect sense to me.