Luang Prabang

We arrived in Luang Prabang this evening, after two days on a long boat. We boarded the boat yesterday at 9:30am. There were a few Loas on board and the rest of the boat was full of tourists. We walked across a plank of wood onto the boat with our back packs on so we wouldnt be lopsided and topple over, but when we stepped inside the boat we couldnt stand up fully because the roof was so low. I took my pack off, but David who had his hands full kept his on. The front was full so we walked towards the back. the further we walked up the boat the lower the roof got. By the end David was so hunched over he was almost kneeling. We stored our bags under the floor boards and then they replaced the floor and pulled up these ricketty pews for us to sit on. They were made out of a couple of planks of wood on legs. One plank of wood was for the back rest and one to sit on. The wood was 15cm wide and only 90cm long- which made it quite a sqeeze for two bottoms. The leg room was even worse. I couldnt put my legs straight in front of me and David had no hope. We sat Lao style with our legs folded to the side. We sat there waiting for about one hour, watching more and more tourists board our already crowded boat.We were surrounded by a bunch of well humoured foreigners - making jokes about the journey ahead. Another hour rolled on and we were beginning to wonder what the hold up was, as the boat was packed to the rafters - when another 15 tourists turned up. We thought that maybe they were going to put them on the roof, as we had even run out of room for the luggage in the main hold and the narrow walk way was now littered with back packs. There was plenty of speculation about a possible second boat (as usually only one boat leaves for Pak Beng per day) or this group of travellers needing to wait until tomorrow to travel down stream, when a very fancy boat pulled up next to us to usher the stranded tourists on board. Up to this point we had been feeling sorry for this group, and now we were all viing for membership to their priviledged club. Well we got our wish. I called out to the owner of the boat to ask if we could join them, as our boat probably had 80 people on board and theirs (of the same size) only had 15. He called me over. I send the boys scrambling over the side of the boat and then it was on for young and old. This second boat had reclining seats with plenty of leg room, polished floor boards and an area at the back to stand up in!! The nice thing was that with the mass exodus from the "third world boat" there was a lot more room for everyone left on board to stretch out and relax. I heard later that they had enjoyed their trip as the stoic underpriviledged! We arrived refreshed and happy at Pak Beng about 7 hours later. I trekked up the hill when we arrived, in order to look for a guest house to stay in, as we had heard some horror stories about accomodation in Pak Beng, and I wanted to be ahead of the crowd. David stayed behind and waited for our luggage off the other boat. Well the town must have caught wind of its bad reputation and decided to up grade its facilities, because we were really happy with the guest houses on offer. We ended up in a couple of twin rooms with ensuit (Lao style ensuit) - the beds were lumpy but there werent the plagues of rats we had heard of and the rooms has fly screens, so we were happy. We even had buffalo curry for dinner! Next morning we all piled on to one boat. A larger one that had plastic chairs. It was a good medium between the two boats on offer yesterday, although i still ended up with a head ache after 7 hours of sitting in a plastic chair!! That said, I really enjoyed myself. The scenery is breath taking all the way down stream. We saw water buffalo, fishermen throwing their hand made nets, tiny bamboo huts dotted throughout the jungle and lots of water side villages with children playing in the water, women carrying huge bundles on their shoulders and goods being traded between animated parties discussing the price. We even had several baskets of ducks join us for part of the journey, and one woman carried a plastic bag full of small birds??!!! It has been a great experience for the boys and we have met some fascinating people. Stephanie