Before I start my trips, I always start with the question, "what do I want to experience in this part of the world?" For Laos, it is the slow-boat ride down the Mekong.
Our guest house - BAP Guest House - sells the tickets for the boat ride. And not only tickets, they sell pillows to save your butt from being flattened being on the boat 8 hours per day. We just bought the ticket, we won't shell out 10,000 kip for a pillow. The boat ride costs 250,000 kip (we don't know how much the real price is but it is fine). We got a free tuktuk ride to the jetty for it so it is fair for us.
To our surprise, the boat was really nice. Too much reading from the forum in the internet gave me a scary picture of the boat. On what I have read, the boats are full of goods to be transported from on riverside to the next, noisy engine that one must bring earplugs, no food on board, and hard-wooden seats that's why they are offering pillow for sale... BUT it wasn't! We had a really nice boat, high-ceilinged, wide and spacious, with cold Beer Lao for sale, and foams for the wooden chair.
It was a relaxing boat ride where you get to see so much of the Mekong and the landscape of the riverbanks... from the Thai and the Lao side even.
Then there we've met certain characters:
ALISTAIR - an English origin but now lives in Australia who is 60 years old and have so much travel experience behind him AND so much more travels ahead of him. We like him a lot!
A french girl - she came to our side of the boat after seeing that I am braiding the hair of Clarissa. She also got braids from Chiang Mai for 400 Thai Baht! She seems to us to be lonely. She told one of the girls that she doesn't get along well with the girlfriend of her brother and that is causing stress to the good relationship she have with him.
The young germans - one with pink pants and shirt from Ko Phi Phi Thailand and one silent type.
The Meditating German - he's wearing a shirt with "PIMP YOUR BEWUSSTSEIN"... hahaha... and meditating all the time... and he even tried to heal Javie's wound with some ritual. I believe it made Javie's wound worst. Opps!
Then the rest of the tourists - Israelis, English, Americans, etc...
We don't care much! We love our beer and our side of the boat!
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