Slow Boat

So it's now about 9:30am on Thursday morning. Nicole went off because she wanted to volunteer at a school teaching English for the morning, something she had heard about doing. I preferred to stay in and catch up on my blogging. And also catch up on my lounging-around-in-my-pajamas time. You'd think after two days sitting on a boat I wouldn't be so lazy. But I am.

So the morning after my last post (Tuesday morning) we got up early and took a tuktuk down to the boat pier. There we bought our tickets for the boat and got on board. Before seeing the boats I really had absolutely no idea what I was in store for (a number of different possibilities of what this "boat" would look and feel like had passed through my imagination) but it was, on the whole, much better than I had expected. I should have figured as such since, apparently, the slow boat is really now just for tourists. Locals use the quicker, cheaper, and considerably more air-conditioned bus to go the route that we took. I didn't know this until I was already well into the trip and was pondering why most everyone on the boat was a tourist. That was the first thing that I noticed. There were barely any (if any at all) Laosian people on the boat. There were a few other South Asians but after a while (and after talking to the Thai woman in front of me) I started to get the hunch that they were tourists as well.

I've mentioned before how Korea is not the most racially diverse place in the world. I haven't seen so many blue eyes and so much blond together in one place in a long time.

As I said, I had no idea what to expect (basically, I'm too absent-minded, I'd say, to Google the idea). One tour book or another had warned against wooden seats. So the four of us (this includes J&J) bought cushions which were sold on the street in Huay Xai.

I'm not sure I mentioned, basically because I half the time am not sure exactly where we are, but the Laotian border town we were in, and the place where we picked up the slow boat is called Huay Xai. Halfway through the slow boat ride we stopped in a little town called Pakbeng for the night. Our final destination (which is where I am now) was Luang Prabang. The river we traveled is called the Mekong.

The seats ended up not being wooden at all. Instead, there were rows and rows of disembodied car seats, like the ones you'd find in a van, linked two or three together. It was a pretty interesting way of getting decently nice seats into an old boat. The boats were all wooden, long, and brightly painted. Ours, number 106, was teal. There were about maybe 80 to 100 seats on the boat, all filled, mainly with youngish tourists, mainly from Europe.

We got to the boat around 9:30am. We were meant to leave at 11:00am but didn't leave until 11:30. This was when I first began to realize how antsy Nicole is when she has to sit for long periods of time on transportation.

At first everyone sat in their seats but it didn't take long for people to start moving about. The boat moved pretty slow and it was beyond safe to do so. I should clarify something I mentioned in my last post regarding the fast vs. slow boats. The fast boat is dangerous only because it goes fast. There was absolutely nothing dangerous about this slow boat. I have heard stories of a slow boat breaking down and all that came of it was that its passengers were somewhat stranded on a sandbar for some hours. The Mekong is narrow enough to easily swim to either end from the middle and shallow enough that I'd say it would be hard to drown. It's shallowness is what makes the fast boat dangerous, as the river is rather rocky, especially in the dry season when it's even shallowed (which I think we are in right now).

So people started moving about on the boat. The boat was not going incredibly slow, it is motorized, but it was pretty slow. Enough to create a nice breeze over all us passengers but not much else of note. There wasn't even much rocking, the river is so calm. So it didn't take long for some guys, who probably thought they were pretty cool, to sit up on the railing of the boat. They sat there drinking beers and staring off into the jungles on either side of the river. Soon other people started doing the same. The boat was a mix of people sitting, lounging on the railings, sleeping on the seats, sitting around talking or playing cards. One group of buys started playing a clapping game like I remember playing when I was a kid in elementary school. It was pretty amusing.

For the first two hours or so I read. And then I finished my book. I spent the remainder of the day (6 hours on the boat the first day) sitting on the ledge of the boat listening to music and staring at the jungle. I don't think I could have ever gotten tired of it, I am serious. The jungle is beautiful. There was almost no signs of civilization the entire time we were on the boat. There were villages here and there that we could see from the river. There would be a little collection of buildings just off the edge of the river. Usually there would also be a few long wooden canoe-like boats in the river, and maybe some fences on the beach, made of sticks, blocking off plots of cultivated plants. There might be some kids on the beach, or in the water, who would wave at us. Sometimes we saw fishermen about, in boats or pulling up nets. But usually it was miles and miles of just jungle. Maybe with clusters of empty plastic bottles bobbing in the river holding up a sunken net in the river and giving some indication that there must be villages out in the jungle somewhere but there wasn't much else. Huge swatches of time passed with no sign of people anywhere else but in our boat.

We reached Pakbeng and were greeted, as we left our boat, by a mass of people advertising their hostels. This little town seems to have geared itself towards the tourists that pass by on the boat, makes sense. It was nice there. We stayed in a hostel and ate dinner at an Indian restaurant which was actually owned by an Indian guy. Why this one random Indian guy chose to make a restaurant in this one little town in Laos is beyond me. Beyond me.

I forgot to mention in my last post that I have recently been feeling a bit sick. It has had nothing to do with the boat, which I actually felt totally fine on the entire time, but I think perhaps the Laotian food has gotten to me a bit. What I have had so far has been surprisingly oily. I'm not sure if that's part of the cuisine or if I've just been unlucky. Regardless, I've skipped a couple meals in the past couple days.

Anyway. We got back on the boat at about 8:00am the next day and set off around 9:30am. My iPod had run out of batter just before docking the night previous and Nicole had refused to unpack her laptop to allow me to charge the thing so I was without music. I also had finished off all my reading material with the exception of Moby Dick which I realized promptly is not a very rapid read. In addition to this, we had changed boats from the day prior and were on a new boat (also teal) which had railings thus preventing us from sitting on the edge of the boat. Therefore my time spent on the second leg of our journey (9 hours) consisted mainly of the following schedule: read approximately 1-2 pages of Moby Dick, stare out at the scenery for approximately 10-20 minutes, fall asleep for approximatively an hour, repeat. Occasionally I ate something and occasionally I had short conversations with the people around me but in general I spent the time passed out asleep in the way that ones body sleeps when its warm and breezy out and there's nothing to do but sit on a boat. I think I slept about 80% of the trip which I consider to be a pretty solid accomplishment when it comes to ways to pass time especially since I had gotten a good nights sleep the night before and also slept well last night (the night after the boat ride). Apparently I've got the gift of just being able to shut things down when I've got nothing better to do. That or I've got a blood parasite. Either way its quite helpful.

We finally reached Luang Prabang round about 6:30pm. We walked about and found a hostel and later had some dinner. Luang Prabang is a very chill little city and so far has been very relaxing. We plan to stay a couple of days here and then fly out to Vietnam the 13th (yes, we added another flight). It feels like a nice place to regroup. After dinner we ran into, on chance, Emma and James from our trekking trip. Sometimes I feel as though all these people we pass by are taking about the same route. At least it has seemed so in the past three days or so, since the Laos border cross. We keep seeing a few of the same people. I suppose when there's a two-day boat involved, you do sort of get stuck on the same path. Most people, however, seem to be going to Cambodia next instead of Vietnam so Nicole and I might be taking a slight detour off the main path.

After dinner we got massages which were pretty amazing. In Thai massage they pull your arms and legs as part of the treatment. At some times its a bit painful but I definitely felt amazing when it was over. My masseuse managed to crack my back about half a dozen different times. At one point, very near the end of the hour, she pulled me up by my arms and bent my back over her knees (its hard to explain). My back crackled, even after nearly an hour of massaging and she chuckled at me. I think I have a bad back. Anyway, I think all her pulling is how I slept so well last night even after having slept for ages on the boat yesterday.

There's wifi in the hostel we're in so I'm on Nicole's computer. That means I'll have pictures up soon. They're uploading now, slowly but surely; there are a lot of them. I've moved them from Flickr to Picasa and actually organized them so hopefully that will make it easier for everyone.

One side note: Phnom Penh is in Cambodia, not Vietnam. I put it down wrong on my introduction post. It's now fixed. Thanks Bryan!

Bryan: I had a decent bowl of Tom Yum in Korea but it's close enough to SE Asia I suppose they have a much better chance of getting it right. I'm bound and determined to make it when I get back to the states, however. We'll see how that goes...