A River Journey Down The Mekong

Let me try to describe what the last two days of travelling in Laos have been like. And I preface this with the fact that my ass hurts more now, after 2 days of non-cycling, than it has since early Malaysia. A two day long-boat trip down the Mekong River from the border town of Huai Xai (yeah, I can't pronounce it either) to Luang Prabang on a hard, straight backed bench right out of a southern baptist church will do that to any butt. The pain really started before the boat ride, next to my ass...in my wallet. What should have cost $15 for the journey ended up being $30 as no one would tell us where the boat dock was. Everyone wanted to sell us tickets but mystery surrounded how to buy directly. One official looking booth next to the sign to our destination was occupied by a guy who pointed up the road when we asked to buy a ticket. Since we had just arrived on the bank of the river in this new country, up the road was, basically, Laos. The advice we got from everyone varied from "Go to the bus station" (we're thinking NO!) to the ubiquitous "can not". We finally caved in and bought the ticket from a guest house as the boat was leaving soon (or so we thought). Following the tuk-tuk on bicycle for 1/4 mile led us to the docks but the damage was already done and we had been fleeced. Fifteen dollars for a quarter mile bike ride...hey, it's a lot when you're spending $2.00 for lodging and $1.50 for meals!
Patience takes on a whole new meaning when travelling and especially travelling with the herd of backpackers all trying to find the next new thing and using the same Lonely Planet book to do it. We all packed into a boat approximately 10 feet wide (to hell with the metric system!) by 100 feet long. I say packed because there were maybe 200 people on this boat. The bicycles were stored up top and all bags were under the floor boards by 9:30am and we were ready to go as it was getting hot. By "we" I mean all the passengers. The crew was way more relaxed than the rest of us however and we didn't do much more than sweat and wait for the occasional straggler (or wiser tourist who had done this before). By the time the engine fired up, to the cheers of all, and we pulled out of the dock/sand bar it was 11:30 and our butts were already complaining. The Brits on board were whining that we were behind schedule as if a schedule actually has meaning over here, and the Canadians were on their 2nd or 3rd "beer-lao". The Canadians were definitely having more fun than the rest of us. But the fact that they were Canadian meant that their livers were well primed for 90 ounces of beer before breakfast. For those who have been to Laos (and I've been here for all of two days), Beer-Lao is more than a beer for the backpacker...it's a way of life. For just about a dollar one can get a good buzz on a 32 ounce bottle of nice, hoppy, light beer. The beer being light and delicious, and the weather being hot and humid, one beer just doesn't seem to cut it for most of the backpacking set. The philosophy of more is better takes over the philosophy of moderation after the second beer. And the resulting drunk fest that occurred on the boat was kind of depressing and yet impressive. People were getting to that place where , holding up a big 32 ouncer in each hand and waving them at passing monks seemed like a good idea. I've seen people drinking a 32 ouncer for breakfast as I'm still picking the sleep goo from my eyes and trying to focus on my lao coffee (read sludge). Lao coffee is another bloggable item that I just don't have the patience for but suffice it to say that sludge is a kindly description. Don't get me wrong, it'll wake you up...like a marching band will wake you up, like Led Zepplin will wake you up, like a Laotian hot chili poop will wake you up!!! Yeah, it'll do the job but in a painful kind of way. The cup, filled one fourth with condensed milk, barely sweetens and whitens but without it the enamel peels from your teeth. I've had 3 cups this morning and you can see how the clarity of mind is effected! The golden triangle indeed. To hell with heroin, the drugs of choice here are beer lao and lao coffee.
All right, back to the point of this entry... the river trip down the Mekong. The river is a brown and beautiful glassy mess. Cutting through places accessable only by river gives one the feeling of exploration as the steep hillsides and river banks were almost totally void of habitation or signs of human activity. Jagged twisted rock formations poke up like sharks teeth or striated fins from the murky brown water. Large forested areas mixed with ferns and palm trees gave it that strange feeling of "I've-been-here-before-except-for-the-tropical-bits". You know the feeling. The air was hot enough that you wanted to jump in the water half the time. The other half you remembered that this river starts in China and that the definition of a river in China is 'something that takes toxic things downstream away from you'. It was easy to remember that however, because anywhere there was a back-eddy, and therefore turbulence, a foamy brown baseball sized sludge-nut formed. It looked like the Mekong was making its own styrofoam and shipping it downstream with us tourists. So instead of looking to the river to cool down we would go to the bathroom. The floor was puddling with god knows how much beer lao pee. And the amazing quality of my new Thai baggy pants to drop into it still amazes me. Holding up the pants and trying to pee and then trying to tie them up again on a rocking boat can be challenging. I failed that challenge and will just tell you that the wicking ability of thai cotton to soak up liquids of any nature needs to be studied. It's uncanny how wet the bottoms of my pants became with an ungodly mixture of watever was on that dark and wet floor. Sitting back in my seat I did notice the cooling effects of urine soaked trousers but couldn't really enjoy it as I also imagined the bacteria colonizing my shins.
There were more people than seats on the boat and the overcrowding gave one the feling of claustrophobia mixed with a big party. In this case a frat party. Going to the back of the boat to pee was an experiment in balance and not stepping on the toes of everyone in the isle. But in the back was the engine "compartment" and a group of sleeping beer-lao soaked backpackers all intertwined and going deaf in the roar of the room. The engine was totally exposed and screaming at OSHA defying decibels. On it were flowers and rice offerings that kept this motor running. It was important as any engine failure would probaboly mean sinking at the downstream pace we were going and the jagged rocks that were jutting out from the banks of the river. And back here too was the Thai Bob Marley who was dreadlocking some young westerner's long black hair. It was as if everyone I had seen for the past month on Khao San Road had been placed in this boat as a cruel joke by god for some forgotten sin. It was everything I find obnoxious about travelling along the backpackers well worn route and I was trapped just a few feet under my bicycle. I was on this boat for two days...9 hours each day.
The second day everyone (even the Canadians!) who had been drinking crazily was subdued and either reading or listening to ipods and trying not to barf by the looks of them. What had the day before been a party boat was now a church service with prayers of delivery and forgiveness coming from the upright benches. A 10 hour church service. And as fun as that sounds, I was dying to get off this beautiful and horrible little long-boat trip down the Mekong. By the time I got to Luang Prabang I was begging for some of those monster hills of N Thailand and the feeling of desperation watching Alisa shrinking into the future. In two days we leave for Vienne Tien and I'm sure I'll be begging for the party boat and a cold one. The grass is always greener, as is the river.