Slow boat down the Mekong

It was wonderful being able to shower and change my clothes. I even shaved despite not having a mirror. Two and a half days in the jungle getting scuffed and scraggly. I wanted to be spotless. You never half clean your bedroom when it's messy. I emerged a new man.

That night, all eight of us met for drinks and merriment. We unsurprisingly reminisced about the Gibbon Experience and all the joys and pratfalls (and trap door falls) that came along with it. The BeerLao flowed and the party moved around settling on the balcony of Alex's hotel. Some called it a night early. Andy and I took off at around 1 and found ourselves shut into the hotel by a door with a surprising amount of locks. Upon unfastening a series of clasps and sliding locks, we opened the door and realized we were still on the second floor. It was the balcony. This was an indicator that calling it a night at that time was a good idea.

The next morning Adam woke up very early. We were once again separating. He was heading north to do some hiking with April and Joanne while I was heading south down the Mekong on the slow boat to Luang Prabang. I bid him a groggy adieu.

At 8am, as I was changing, Alex barged into the room with my wake-up call. I figured I must have told him where I was staying last night and tasked him to do this. To be honest, I'm impressed I had the foresight. He was all grins and energy as usual.

I threw down breakfast at a restaurant and had the owner make me a sandwich for lunch on the boat. Andy was suspiciously late, so I found his room and barged in to deliver a wake-up call. We both loaded into a songthaew bound for the pier where the boat was lying in wait. It was a long narrow vessel; covered thankfully, and painted an ugly shade of green. Inside, benches, ripped straight out of Sunday school were placed, one on each side, facing forward in a row with very little space in between. The plank you sat your ass on was too short. You perched rather than sat. My knees knocked the bench in front of me. These seats sucked.

It was 9 and the boat was still pretty empty. Maria and Jean-Marie were on board, opting for the nicer seats in the back. I avoided these as they were next to the noisy engine. Soon, about 30 more people piled in and filled up the remaining seats. The crowd was about 90% foreigners, all fresh from Thailand and looking to get rowdy. The brouhaha crescendoed as everyone got comfortable with one another. Soon the engine roared and the boat took off.

The ride would be two days long, broken up by an overnight stay in Pak Beng. I had my lunch, my journal and my book. If those couldn't keep me occupied, I had a handful of colourful personalities to entertain me.

Five minutes after leaving the pier, people were already fed up with the seats and started piling them in a big heap, opting to sit on the floor instead. A Lao guy swung out the window and onto the roof so people could pass their benches up. Andy and I diligently stuck with our benches for the time being. Before we knew it, the BeerLao came out and the volume increased exponentially. Stories about someone's buddy who was so off their ass on such and such that they did this and that. You know the kinds of stories. Entertaining but not sustaining. The kind people who had just broken free of their parents' influence like to tell. Weed smoke floated around the boat. Someone had ipod speakers and started blasting progressive house. It was a party boat and it hadn't even hit noon.

I met some nice people on that boat. A guy from Luxembourg looking to teach in Korea, a Scotsman with a Canadian girlfriend, a Canadian with an odd name (Cleal). Alex was in his element. His characteristic cries of "R-r-r-r-ripa!"and "Brother man!", all delivered with a thick Aussie accent, rang out every so often. One guy threw a hammock up. In the front, the few Lao people on board were still seated, with discipline, on their wooden benches. Andy and I had given up and thrown them aside by then. So much better.

Outside, the scenery slowly passed by. Jagged rocks shot out of the water close to the shore while rolling hills flanked both sides of the river. We would pass fishermen in longboats wearing the classic rice farmer hats. Kids swimming would enthusiastically wave to us. Sometimes we'd pass dead, bloated animal carcasses. The water was brown.

The sun started going down at 5 and the party had reached fever pitch. A lively game of cards to my left, and a large, bellowing Aussie to my right. So many flesh wounds in sight. The young and unhinged. The young and reckless.

The boat pulled into Pak Beng at 6. The touts were waiting on the shore like alley cats at the back door of a restaurant. Kids jumped on board and began hauling backpacks onto the shore, a favor that would inevitably demand payment. I grabbed my pack and walked up the rocks. Two touts were set on me and started a bidding war for my business. One was a young woman with grace and poise, the other a brash, confident man. Grace and poise won me over, not to mention a great price and a free shot of Lao whiskey. I got Andy in on my super deal.

We were the only ones staying in the guesthouse. It was run by the woman and her sister and they seemed thrilled to have gotten our business. The beds were firm and the whiskey strong. Like drinking a wino's stomach acid. We planned a wake up call for 8, then set out to find the others.

Pak Beng is probably on very few maps. It's literally a road that leads down to the pier, lined with restaurants and guesthouses. It's no doubt the slow boat that sustains this place. I almost wondered what came first. Young mothers with babies leaned out of windows. Dogs and cats wandered the streets aimlessly. I saw Foibles zip by on a tuk-tuk. The whole town is at most 200 meters long, easily walkable, so she was getting taken for a ride in every sense of the phrase.

Alex and the others were at one place eating, drinking and being merry so we joined them. I met even more people. Laos seemed to be the place for that. More people we knew showed up and we started pushing tables together. Before long, it was a veritable banquet. Jean-Marie stopped by and honked out something fierce on his harmonica. Some bloke had a guitar. Close to midnight, all of the power in the town went out. Our server lit candles and we kept on.

Back at the guesthouse, I made my way around the empty wooden halls with a flashlight. Everything was deathly silent, like the part in the horror movie right before the really scary thing happens. The power resumed shortly afterwards so I was able to enjoy the fan as I slept.

Next morning I awoke before my scheduled wake-up call. In fact, my wake-up call walked into my room just as I was changing. Two mornings in a row now. It was back on the boat. This was actually a different boat, one that was thankfully a lot wider. Excellent, as this was the longer stretch of the trip. Luang Prabang was still a good ten hours away, but at least it would be a comfortable ride. Without any second thought, the benches were once again thrown onto the roof. A rowdy group of Canadians showed up with a newly purchased bottle of Lao Lao whiskey. Andy asked if I thought they would bust into it before noon. I reckoned it would be done by noon.

I spent most of the ride reading. My book, South of the Border, West of the Sun, by Haruki Murakami; a story of unfateful love in a cool climate. Beautifully melancholic, I would fall into the pages, rapt in the narrative until a bong hit would waft by my face to remind me of the crassness I was surrounded by. It was noon and the whiskey was all gone.

Old Man Mekong maintained his steady flow. Men in longboats plied fish from his depths. A boat lay wrecked on his shore. Ambling a pathway through Indochina, he left both bounty and ruin in his wake. His hand gentle, yet just.

I had finished my book and was whiling away the hours making polite conversation and reading excerpts from Andy's Charles Bukowski novel. The setting sun dramatically shifted from stern to bow. We had just passed the fishhook that swung the river into Luang Prabang. Home stretch. Soon the town emerged. A cluster of longboats clung to the shore and hints of civilization peeked through the trees atop the hill. Feelings of excitement were temporarily suspended by a huge, bloated cow carcass that floated beside the boat and stunk up something fierce. Sounds of disgust made the way down the boat along with the smell. On the shore, the touts set to work on us.

Passing up the chairs.

Party on the boat brooooo!

Classic Mekong.