We’re weaving on the Mekong river towards Thailand on a little boat, the roof sheltering us from the bright sun, but open to the shivery cold morning on the sides. It takes our minds some time to relax and accept the fact that we have just signed up to sit there the next two days, with absolutely maddeningly nothing to do except look and look and look at the view.
Sitting with absolutely no movement, because the boat is so low, the seats so small and narrow, if you moved, you’d knock somebody out. The scenery stays the same. Mountains and boulders line both sides of the river ahead creating a huge canyon. The sky is a deep blue. The waters of the Mekong are clear, and the sun is reflected blindingly from its broken mirrors, but when I put out my hand to touch, it’s icy cold.
It’s a mixed crew on board. Including the Laotian boatmen, there are people from every continent, but all look similar. Like refugees, in fact. Clothes are faded to a nondescript hue. Whatever the original hair color is now camouflaged by red dust. Haircuts and shaves and a good wash seem months ago. Bright eyes look out of place.
The first half an hour there is great agitation. Someone has just announced that there is no bathroom on the boat, and that we’ll just have to wait till the end of the day, to go. After that is proved wrong (there is a tiny WC, with cardboard walls, at the back), relief makes us forget to enquire for a while if food is on the itinerary. The boatmen speak no English, so it takes 15 minutes of sign language to confirm that it is not. We’re going to make our way down the river, sans stops, till sunset.
Chocolates, bananas, a piece of pound cake - people break out whatever they had left in their bags. Sitting in those tiny benches among strangers, eating with dusty hands the shared tiny treats is like being back at kindergarten. At any rate, it has broken the ice for the usual tourist conversation- how they paid too much for hotels, bar companions, how to get those Sao paper lanterns shipped back home. We’re all leaving Laos by river, stopping the next two nights at Pak Beng and Huay Xai, and finally on the third morning, taking a ferry from Huay Xai to the Thai border.
Time passes very very slowly. It’s bad not to have a watch, but it is even worse if you do. I thought it would warm up as the sun rose, but I’m wrong, the cold is now in our bones. More than anything else, the enforced immobility is becoming impossible to bear. Some try to write in their journals, others are reading some used bookstore find, or argue endlessly. Quite a few are traveling on the roof, to sunbathe, ignoring the ticket stub reading in bold print No Going On The Roof.
We’re passed by small speedboats that roar past, making our boat rock and roll. These will take half the time as our boats, but there’s also a high likelihood of capsizing and killing yourself in a spectacular fashion by exploding into a fireball.
After what seems like a week, the sun dips in slow motion, dusk followes a brilliant sunset. The boat heaves to the side of the river, and we clamber in darkness up slippery clay slopes to what seems like a row of lighted shacks.
This is Pak Beng. Incredibly in this place on the edge of nowhere, there are guesthouses. We find rooms, showers, eat down in the restaurants and set out to explore Pak Beng. A few hundred feet down the road, we reach the end. We crash in on some locals warming themselves by a fire, and sample their snake whisky. Its made from rice, and usually the bottle contains a whole snake or scorpion, now dead of course, said to improve its potency. Its 70 proof. No one remembers how we got back to the hotel.
The next day, back on the boat for more of the same. Everyone has now packed twice as much food as is needed. But people who may have thought it was a charming romantic idea are now snapping irritable. We slow down a bit, but not too much, when some guy rolls off the roof and falls overboard. The guy had fallen asleep sunning, and swims madly thinking he’s gonna be left behind.
The boatmen are grinning from ear to ear, having their fun with him, slowing down and then speeding up a little. He manages to climb back in, then he and his wife have an uproarious argument in French. She’s only mad because all their vacation money was in his pocket. It gets colder from the wind, the river is narrowing and moving much faster. The speedboats pass even closer, and the people in them are visible, frozen stiff from the wind, wearing helmets to block out the skull-shattering noise of the engine.
Huay Xai is a repeat of Pak Beng. But just across the river is the Thai border. Its past six, when the visa office closes. No one is in the mood to spend another night, so we pay double for a ferry that takes us across. We walk past the closed visa office to some small cottages offering bed and board, we will have to get visas the next day.
The difference as we enter Thailand is visible. The cottages look just like the ones in Pak Beng, but inside, they’ve got the works-cable TV, telephone, and air-conditioning. The rusticity is only for the benefit of the tourist. The menu is back to the usual Thai deep-fried everything.
We are out of Laos, and at dinner, everyone is already into deep nostalgia. There is a din while everyone remembers the last few weeks of mountain climbing, hill-tribe trekking, cave exploring, kayaking, biking, souvenirs, massages, monks, temples, bars, discos, food, karaoke, disasters, lucky finds, people we’ve met... enough to last for a long time.
In a few weeks, back at the office or home, doing the same incrediblly dull things as before, the boat ride will join the legends of vacations past, and good times will seem great, but the bad times will seem even better.