Day 5 Thursday Chiang Rai to Pak Beng

We had an early start and drove for 2 hours through mainly farming land – corn, hops, tobacco, mangos and bananas . We watched the sun rise as we drove mainly eastwards to Chiang Khong on the Thai side of the border with Lao. There was a fairly orderly queue to clear immigration and then we walked down a hill and got into long narrow boats and we taken across the Mekong river to the Laos side. The queue of people who had visas (like us)was fairly orderly but there was a noisy, pushing throng of people trying to get visas nearby.

We then climbed into the back of a little local bus ( made for short people, I discovered) to be taken a kilometre or so to another place on the river where we bordered a larger more luxurious boat ( along with about 14 others of mixed nationalities) to cruise for 2 days to Luang Prabang. After a delicious lunch we stopped at a Khamu village. Our excellent local guide told us about the life of the 75 families / 350 people who lived there and we wandered around. It was a poor village, the people were animists and had several shamans to help them deal with the spirits, both good and bad. They were subsistence farmers and occasionally sold their excess crops. There was a primary school.

It was very relaxing watching the river, the rocks, the small villages in amongst the jungle, the clearings with crops, the occasional group of people on the river banks, the few other boats.

In the late afternoon we arrived at the lodge where we stayed about 1 km from Pak Beng. We walked up a sandy path to the hotel while an army of helpers carried our bags. The lodge consisted of a central area – admin, restaurant etc and about 16 usually individual bungalows. Mine was at the far end of the complex and had a balcony from which I had a lovely view of the mighty Mekong. The windows were wood louvers with gaps between the louvers so sleeping under the provided mosquito net was a must.

Before dinner we were treated to a display of singing and dancing from some of the local tribes. It was very low key – all kids dancing with, I think, some of their parents acting as musicians but they seemed to be enjoying themselves.