Day 131 and 132 Slow Boat

As the first mandatory point of the day, we had to cross the border to Laos. The exit from Thailand was very easy and the entry into Laos as well. It turned out that Swiss citizens do not need a visa if they do not intend to stay in Laos for more than 15 days. Since our current plan does not involve staying longer than 14 days, I was able to take the shortcut while everyone else had to take care of the visa.

Once our small group had crossed the border, we were picked up by a taxi and taken to the Mekong River, where we would be traveling by boat towards the east, specifically to Luang Prabang, today and tomorrow.

Although we were assured everywhere that it is currently low season and there would be enough space on the boat, the boat was fully packed. I can't imagine how crowded it would be during the high season.

As the name of the boat suggests, "Slowboat," we cruised eastward with the current. A magical landscape passed by on both sides. Thailand was on the right side and Laos was on the left.

After a while, it became quieter on the boat. The landscape was still beautiful, but we had all taken photos of it and it did not change much anymore. Every now and then, a speedboat would overtake us, and we were glad that we chose the slow boat. The speedboats raced down the river very quickly. Even the locals wore helmets, which they would not normally do. Well, our journey took a bit longer. We spent a good 6 hours on the boat today. There were enough other travelers on the boat, so you could always talk to someone or uncomfortably doze off in your seat.

We were all relieved when we arrived in Pakbeng, the town where we stayed overnight before continuing our journey tomorrow. But first, we had to go through the gauntlet of representatives from various hostels and hotels and escape the crowd at the port. We had booked our hostel in advance and knew where we wanted to go. Everyone in our small group was staying at the same hostel.

For dinner, I once again had a craving for a real piece of meat, as I had eaten a lot of rice in the past few weeks. Fortunately, there were a few restaurants here in the small town that offered that. We chose the one that also promised a free banana whiskey. In short, the whiskey was not bad, even though it didn't really taste like whiskey. The steak, on the other hand, was rather disappointing. It was very small and very dry... oh well.

We ended the evening with a card game in our group, well, we ended up playing until 2 o'clock in the morning.

After a short night, we went back to the boat after breakfast. We had another 8-hour journey ahead of us. Practiced from yesterday, we passed the time playing cards, discussing, and sleeping until we arrived in Luang Prabang just before 5 o'clock. We said goodbye to our small group and each went our own way.

The gauntlet began again. We took a tuk-tuk from the port towards our hostel. But the driver, who did not know our hostel and did not want to accept our help with the map, finally dropped us off pretty frustrated in the city center and quickly disappeared. Well, then we just walked to our hostel, which luckily was not far from the city center.

After a refreshing shower, we went to the night market to try out new Laotian dishes.