The boat is long and narrow. It is much slower than it's counterpart, the 'speed boat'. It takes two days, sitting on the floor of the boat, moving down the Mekong River between Thailand and Laos, to reach your destination. The journey is long. The space is cramped. The ride is slow. The boats are often over-loaded and it is not unusal for them to sink because of this, and people drown. But, I read that this is one of the "EPIC JOURNEYS" everyone must do at least once.

I left the Fun-D Guesthouse before daylight this morning, walking to the bus station in the center of town . There were 3 other foreigners on the bus, all backpackers. The couple was from Germany and so was Annie, a solo backpacker.

Chain Rai has been a pleasure to be in. Maybe I can return one day to spend more time here. As the day begin to dawn, the bus begins climbing into the Thailand mountain. The scenery is pretty, the air turns cold. We are leaving the warmth of Chiang Rai behind, we learn. The four of us are surprised at how much cooler it is turning. The fog in the mountains is heavy as the old bus moves slowly along. It will be about a 3 hour ride for us to reach the border between Thailand and Laos.

The further along the bus moves, the prettier the scenery. There are rock formations spiraling out of the rice fields. With the mountains as a background, it would be a beauty of a photo shot, but the fog is dense.

Arriving in the border town of Chiang Khong, Thailand, there is a rain and the air is cold . The bus drops us off a few kilometers from the boat pier. Why not just drop us off at the pier? This way the tuk-tuks can make money transporting you a couple of kilometers to the boat docks.

The tuk-tuks are small. The couple takes one and Annie and I take one. By going together the cost is split between however many people ride.

Some people stay overnight in Chiang Khong before crossing the river to the Laos border. My plan is to catch the ferry across the river today, get my visa for Laos, and spend the night in the border town of Huay Xai, Laos.

The tuk-tuks get us to the dock. I walk up to a little hut and hand over my passport and departure card. They look at the dates. I am leaving Thailand 3 days before my visa expires. They stamp me out of Thailand and I am on my way to a new country.

 Further down the hill, I pay the fee to ride the 5-minute ride across the Mekong River from Thailand into Laos on an old, narrow, shabby boat, with the 3 Germans and many others . As is common here, they try to put many more people on the boat than what it can hold. There are no seats for some, and they get off to wait for another ferry boat.

Laos is situated between Thailand and Vietnam. It's a mountainous country, a little larger than the state of Utah. Laos was a French colony until 1953, so there is a lot of French architecture, food, wine, and other French influence in the towns. Laos is a communist country.
 
I get off the ferry boat and I am in the country of Laos. Once on shore, it is time for us to get visas. You can get a 30-day visa for Laos when you arrive at the border. Up the hill from the river we walk. There is a light rain and the air is much colder than when we left Chiang Rai in Thailand a few hours earlier. 

Halfway up the hill there is a crowd of people at an open-air building. It is the Immigration and Customs building, where you get the visa. 

I walk up the stairs with my backpack, into the crowd . I see several windows with people inside. There are no signs informing you what to do. One of the people in the crowd tells me, "Just stick your passport in the window there, someone will take it". I make my way through the crowd to the window and a hand appears. I place my passport in the hand, and the hand with my passport in it is gone.

Annie shows up a couple of minutes later and I tell her what to do. Backpackers help each other out with information like this when trying to navigate the different systems or find transportation, etc. With no signs or lines to get in, passing the word along is the only way newcomers have any idea what to do.

The small outside area is packed with travelers, most carrying backpacks, but some with luggage. There is no room to move or see the window where the passports will reappear with a visa stamped inside.

Someone says the next window is where the passport will be returned . Inside the little room there are 5 Laos officials. They sit at a table. The hand that took the passport gives it to the first person at the table. That person looks at each page of the passport before handing it to the next person at the table. They in turn look at each page. This continues all around the table, until, finally, the last person stamps something in it. 

A person appears at the window with a handful of passports. He tries to pronounce the name on the passport, but no one ever recognizes their name the way it is pronounced. We learn to watch for the color of our countries passport. Mine is blue, U.S. Other countries are brown or green, etc. If a blue passport is held up U.S. people make their way forward to see if it is theirs, since we cannot understand the pronunciation of our names.

A blue passport is held up. I move forward. It is mine. I seem to be the only U.S. citizen here right now. Each country pays a different amount for a visa . I pay $35. 

45 minutes after handing over my passport, I have my visa. Other countries take maybe 5 minutes to do this. They have lines to get in and signs to direct you. There is no system to this system in Laos.

Moving through the crowd with your backpack is challenging. People can't move aside for you because they too have packs on, and the space is so limited. There is nowhere for them to move aside for you.

With my passport, I make my way back out of the crowd. Now, I need to change money into LAK (Laos Kip). The money exchange window is right across from the visa window. So basically, the people wanting visas and money exchanged are all crammed into the same small waiting area. Getting the money exchanged is just as challenging as getting the visa.

For my 6,000 Baht I get 1,500,000 kip. (one million 500 thousand). There are almost 8,000 kip to $1 . Am I now a millionaire?

The four of us finally get all this done and meet at a small table on the street to buy a ticket for the slow-boat up the Mekong River.

It is raining here in Huay Xia, Laos, where I intended to spend the day and night. I decide to go with my new German friends on the slow boat today, rather than wait until tomorrow.

We hire another tuk-tuk. Annie and I in one and the couple in the other. These tuk-tuks are small and only enough room for a two people and their packs.

Arriving at the dock we are directed to a waiting area that is covered. We are glad we will not stand in the rain until the boat is loaded. Someone collects our passports and boat tickets, and go up a hill with them, apparently to sign us in for the boat. We don't like our passports being taken and the German guy (they told me their names, but I don't know the spelling) and I followed, while the girls waited below .

Half an hour later the boat pulls away from shore. The rain makes us keep the tarps lowered over the windows. It's disappointing not to see the countryside as we go up the river. A couple of hours later, the rain stops and the tarps go up!

The scenery is wonderful and the air is cool. Passengers sit on the bottom of the wooden boat, piling their bags at the back of the boat. Most bring food for the two day trip and buy pillows to sit on before leaving shore. Sitting on the bottom of the hard boat is very difficult without a soft pillow to sit on. I did not buy one, though. 

A few days before the trip I read in a forum that many of the boats now have seats in them and a cushion is not needed. Apparently, in an effort to increase tourism, a tv commercial was filmed about the boats. In order to put forth a more appealing side to the boats, the seats were added to many of the boats. This has been a recent event and a lot of people haven't heard about the change . Many have bought pillows on the shore and come on board carrying them. The sellers of the pillows forgot to inform them I guess. They hold the pillows in their laps the entire journey. 

The seats that are in some of the boats now are not new. They have been salvaged from wrecked autos. Some are bench type van seats, some are bucket car seats, some seat 3 and some 2 people. They are different shapes and sizes, but mostly grey in color. Still....better than a hard wooden floor to sit on.

One guy has a small guitar that he strums as we move down the river. "Where are you from, where have you been, where are you going" are some of the questions everyone is asking each other as we meet our new travel companions for the next two days.

When I heard about the 'slow boat', I pictured a boat that just drifted down the river. But, the boat actually goes about 20-30 km an hour (12-18mph) . 

The nature scenery is beautiful and you get to see the local villages along the way. Most passengers are foreigners. The locals that live in town choose to take the bus, now that the roads have been improved. 

For those living in the small villages along the river, though, the only way to get somewhere is by boat. Now and then, the boat will go to shore and a local will jump from another boat onto ours, or jump from the bank onto the boat.

By 8 P.M. we reach the small village of Pak Beng. It is about halfway between Huay Xai, the Laos border, and our destination, Luang Prabang. The boat docks. 

We will spend the night here. It is dark and cool now as we wait for our bags to be unloaded. All the backpacks were stored in the hull of the boat, under the floor. All passengers must get off, then the boards are removed and the bags recovered . We wait, in the dark, on the bow of the boat, for the bags to come.

It's crazy in the dark, trying to identify your bag as they are unloaded. The crowd makes it hard to move with your bag once you do get it. I wait for mine. Once I get it and head up the hill, I look for Annie, but cannot find her in the dark. 

I meet the German couple. They have not seen her, either. Maybe she got her bag and went ahead of us, up the hill. We walk in the dark. No one has a room booked here. You just have to find one in the village when the boat docks. 

Every place is full we come to. At the end of the village, we start back down to try a side road in hopes of finding a room for the night. The couple wants a room. I just need a corner somewhere. One of the guesthouses offers me a mattress on the floor, but no private room for the couple. I take the mattress and they continue looking for a room .

While I am looking at the place where my mattress will be put, 6 other backpackers show up. Not having any luck finding a place, they also ask for a mattress. The 7 of us will sleep side-by-side on the deck of the guesthouse, just above the Mekong River. 

 Mattresses are brought up from the basement and thrown down on the deck that is normally the place where food is served. The mattresses are dropped beside the tables. Home for the night!

A boy that works at the guesthouse, probably early 20's sits down to talk to us as we ready our beds. He wants to play the guitar the backpacker brought. "Listen me, Listen me", he says. He strums a while and we encourage him. He stops and talks in his broken english. We ask him about his life and Laos. He asks us about our homes. It's a day and night to remember, as we sit here on the floor on our mattresses, in the darkness, in this remote village somewhere in the land of Laos.

One by one we lay back on our mattress and fall asleep, here in the middle of nowhere .  . . not one of us dreaming that the next day someone would yell, "......we're taking on water in the back of the boat," as we prepare to swim to shore.