The two days in Luang Prabang were not really days for sightseeing or enjoying this Unesco-listed world heritage city because we had just too much to organise for our trip down the Mekong river with a boat we still had to look out for. The guy in our guesthouse helped us finding even if later we found out that it was a total ripoff but anyway the cheapest option we had (but at least we met some other Germans on the river who paid twice as much as we did ;-P ). after a whole of searching we finally found her, UTOPIA (named so by us), a 8-9m long local fisher that looked more like a canoe. We paid 1.500.000kip for her, that equals about 120€. Additionally to that we had to buy lifevests, food, water and other useful stuff and started at the end with less than 20€ in our pocket into the wild. Very optmistic, maybee too optimistic as we found out soon. The day we left southwards was sunday the 18th of October and we faced the first big problem already when tried to transfer Utopia from one river bank to the other and definitely underestimated the strenght of the river or overestimated my ability to stear Utopia alone by myself. Annika waited at the other side of the river and looked for our stuff and I arrived there, one hour later, without Utopia (she was “parked” 500m further downstream the river than actually planned among reeds) and it took us two more hours to finally get back to her, put everything on board and finally start our journey. It took some time until we managed to control the boat properly and made acquaintanship with some of the many whirlpools and rapids we had to face on our way but we also already made a good distance this first day and stopped at one of the large numbered and absolutely stunning river beaches for the night. We pitched our tent, started a campfire hearth (to prepare our dinner) and went to bed pretty early. Our plan was adjust our sleeping rhythm with the rhythm of the sunset/sunrise to use as many daylight as possible as it was just to dangerous to paddle in the dark. Day 2 was pretty relaxed, the landscape turned more and more into total wilderness and was just amazing. The defintely highlight of the day was the little “lagoon” in the middle of the river where we stopped for a swim and spent our early afternoon break (to escape the cruel midday sun) before we made some more kilometers before our final stop at a tiny, little and cute beach. We parked Utopia in the bay beside I started to prepare dinner over another fire because Annika was totally down with a heavy sunstroke that included fever and all other unwelcome side-effects. Even worse, the night was going to become a total nightmare. When Annika went up at two o’clock in the morning to have another wattery dump (she told me to write that!) she discovered that Utopia was gone. She woke me up with the words “Daniel, Utopia is gone!”. I thought she was joking but she was not. Utopia really was gone, together with our backpacks, that, smart as we are, left on the boat for lazyness reasons. The backpacks were not really the important stuff, it would have been annoying to organise all necessarities again but the real pain in the ass was that we had our passports and credit cards in the bags and just 20€ in our pockets. Congratulations! It was pitch dark at that time, the river in this area was really wild and it started to rain a little bit later so there was absolutely nothing we could do about it until sunrise and tried to get some more sleep. We somehow sensed that the next day probably would become very exhausting and annoying for us. Ok, as soon as it became light (the sun wasn’t seen that day, it was raining all morning long) we stopped a passing family in their small motorboat, gestured our situation and made clear that it would be very important for us to get to somewhere where we could something. Where this “somewhere” would be and what the “something” that we wanted to do was, was actually not really clear to us, too but it was a good feeling to get away from the small island (the local mans family stayed there for us now because we all didn’t fit in his boat). He brought us to the next bigger village which was actually just a ferry crossing (the only Mekong ferry crossing in Laos!) where we tried to gesture our situation again. The people who surrended us quickly were not big help and didn’t really know what to do either but our rescue came with a lady who handed a mobile phone to us with somebody speaking english on the other end. This woman, Saikam her name, told us to get into the only pick-up truck standing around which will bring us to her. We really were unbelievably lucky that Saikam was in this area at that time for visiting her parents because she usually lives in the U.S. . Now we had somebody who spoke english and lao and she was extremely helpful, too. After a breakfast she went with us to the next police station for she (and the rest of the village that gathered around us) was convinced that our boat was stolen. As nearly everywhere in the world, going to the police to report a theft and to hope to get back your belongings is not very efficient way in Lao also. It’s rather annoying and beside being corrupt, not thrustworthy and lazy the police was very incompetent as well. So during our hearing the police officer didn’t even ask what colour our boat had and one or two hour later when we were already back at Saikams parents’ house they seriously called Saikam one more time to ask Saikam if our boat was really gone. Sometime ago someone explained me the reason for the word “ridiculous”. He said “Two funny that you can’t even lough about it”. I think that perfectly fits here. After our visit at the cops we started to get into action and to look for our boat by ourselves so we went down to the ferry crossing to find a boat that would drive us downstream or around so we could ask people if someone had seen it or just look out for it. Our hopes to get it back was nearly zero at that moment, we already started to accept that we would have to deal with a lot of bureaucratic stuff in the next weeks to get new passports, new visas, credit cards etc. and we will lose a lot of money to arrange that, too. Then, directly out of nowhere, we got the message that a village about 1,5hours downstream by motorboat did find Utopia. At the first call that a local guy made they denied having found anything and even when Saikam offered a reward they still didn’t know anything. A few minutes later the called back and asked how much they would get if they had found our boat… Alright, our boat was found and we engaged a guy with a biiig motorboat to bring us to the village. Utopia really was there, including all our stuff, so the bargaining to re-buy her could begin. We agreed on 240000kip (=20€, really a bargain compared to the costs we would have had for new passports etc.), loaded Utopia in the big boat and went back, as happy as pigs in the mud, to Saikams village where we spent the night before finally going on the next morning. So, how did it happen that the boat dissappeared? We have not the slightest idea! Theory One: Night fishers or other people who saw us the evening before camping at this place stole the boat. The police and the Saikam’s villagers said that this would be the most common case ’cause it’s not unusual that boats get stolen in this area. Against this theory speaks that nothing (except a camping mattress) was actually gone (but the villagers who “found” claimed for some bread that they thought would be in the rice bags where we actually packed our backpacks into). Theory Two: We didn’t tie Utopia up properly so she used her chance to escape into freedom and floated away. Against this theory speaks that we tied her up at a paddle that we stucked deep in the sand and the paddle was gone with her but still there when we got Utopia back. Usually the paddle must must must have been lost when Utopia floated down by herself. But anyway, we really didn’t care anymore at the end of this long day. The most important thing was that we had our stuff back and could go on. That all definitely wouldn’t have been possible without Saikam’s help and the help of several other people we don’t know the names of. Saikam organised so much for us, borrowed us money, invited us for food and into her families home, drove around with all day (although she was afraid of water) and just came to us like the miracle we needed. Thank you so so so much!
Alright, let’s go on, but soon we had to learn that the trouble was not over yet. After some wild hours with lots of deep (1-1,5m deep and 2-3m wide) whirlpools and rapids we hit a rock under the surface of the water and discovered that we had a bog hole in the back of the boat and Utopia was leaking. Luckily a beach to land was nearby. Our first examinations showed that one replaceable part of the rubber where the motor usually is situated was gone but we had nothing to replace it. The stick we used was not very waterproofed but fortunately now two boys who were picked by an old fisherman helped us in a professional way. They carved a new plug for us with their machete what took sometime but in the end was better then the plug we had before. All they wanted for that was a cigarette and a bottle of water! I doubt that they will ever read this, but anyway, thank you! We put up our tent again and ended this day very early.
But now enough with the bad stuff. The next morning we had to face the biggest rapid and whirlpools on our trip and managed it gloriously. I mean, we had not so much control about our boat and we were just lucky but we survived. Honestly, I can imagine that people don’t survive these kinds of monster whirlpools when they have not so much luck as we had and get directly into the middle of this mess. This situation was scary and also it was the only situation we definitely were very glad to have our lifevests. Usually a whirlpool developes when two different riverstreams (f.e. caused through rocks or other obstacles in the water) hit each other. Most of the time that was not really dangerous for us (our boat was long, that was our luck), just annoying, but sometimes and especially in this area there were massive rocks in the water leading to massive whirlpools. Our usual behaviour of paddling as fast as we could to get out of the trouble was just worthless, the streams were too strong and played with our boat like it would be just floating wood. It didn’t happen only once that we got a good amount of water into the boat due to the rough river conditions. But our new plug was strong and did it’s job very well.
Day 4-8 we reached more calm waters and the before gorgeous landscape with high mountains and deep jungle surrounding us changed slowly into the lao low land. Not so much rocks in the water, just very small whirlpools and rapids (they were actually fun!) made it a pleasant and relaxed time on the river. We saw elephants by and snakes in the river and hundreds of children (or grown-ups) at the rivershore greetings us with happy smiles, waving hands and a loud “Sabaidee!”, what means hello. But the real highlights were the evenings when we just relaxed, had our well-earned dinner and watched the great sunsets and the clear sky with it’s millions of stars visible in this no mans land. That all plus the sounds out of the jungle behind us really made the Mekong experience paradisial.
At day seven we slowly ran out of our supplies of water and food and had to stop to shop in a small village. We were happy that they had a small shop and it was possible to get some fresh water there and the children (and once again, the grown-ups, too) were happy that we came to visit the village. I think we maybe were the first foreign people who visited this place since a long time, at least we were a star attraction that day. When we were buying things in the small shop (where they brought us chairs to sit down for our order) I counted 43 people around us who watched us what we would buy. After being said goodbye by all children in the village we met two other tourists on the river a couple of hours later. Paul and Martin also bought a boat in Luang Prabang but were cheating because they bought a motorboat For the boat itself (a little bit bigger than ours) without a motor they paid 400$, roundabout 270€, so we still were “happy” with the deal we made with Utopia. Actually it’s really not a common trip to go down the Mekong independently (and especially not by paddle boat) so both sides were happy to see each other and to talk about the experiences the other side made. This was the first time, after seven days, when we got know where exactly we are and how many kilometers we made the last seven days bacause these guys had something like a map (smart guys!) We found out that we were doing well and must have paddled around 50km per day because we were just a half day away from Pak Lei, the only bigger city on the Mekong river between Luang Prabang and Vientiane. The guys agreed to tow us to Pak Lei what was really cool and a nice alternative to the endless paddling we did the last days for the hour it took until a part of their motor broke and we had to pull over to a beach. Repairing was not possible so we had to stay another night and reached Pak Lei just in the next day. But it was very funny and interesting with them. A good thing was, that we were able to pay back a little bit of the help we got on the river and helped out the guys with money to repair their boat (they had not money at all left, their motor broke down not the first time) and with cigarettes, food and drinks that we had plenty now and they none. The next morning we appointed to meet in Pak Lei with them, we already went on and they went to repair their boat. After 3 or 4 hours they overtook us in our noon break but maybe two hours later we got them again, in Pak Lei, the final destination of our paddle trip, but we didn’t know that yet. We really were very happy to reach the city. Everyday the sun was burning down on us with no mercy and without any centimeter of shadow around and this day was maybe the worsest of all.
Pak Lei had an ATM, what surprised me a little bit but saved our asses. We were back in business. And back in something like civilisation.
At all we spent three night in this little small town on the edge of the Mekong and the days were, except our ever present diarrhoe and feebleness (maybe a result of the merciless and permanent sun radiation the days before), just cool. The town is not very nice and some people would call it boring but the people there were just great, foreigners are still a total rarity in this part of Laos (the villages we passed on the Mekong the last 5 days before all had no street connection and are just reachable by boat, so the whole area is pretty isolated from the rest of the world). Examples? We found a very nice food stall just opposite our guesthouse where we dined at least twice a day and the evening before we left Pak Lei the owner of this food stall (Ta his name) knocked on our room door. He brought three beer and food that we ate or drank together. Another great thing happened in the morning of our second day, when a girl with a scooter stopped for us and ask us if we could visit her school class to teach a little bit english (usually she was the teacher), what we (or mostly Annika) did the same evening. The students were all between 14 and 16 years old and the lesson was very funny. Mostly they wanted to learn english songs. The teacher, to us: “Are you tired?” We: “No”, Teacher: “Good so if you’re not tired can you maybe sing one more song for us?”, very funny, now the students know songs like “Brother John” and “My Bonnie Is Over The Ocean”. One evening we spent with Martin and Paul in a nearby Cafe with some beer discussing nutrition and tried the whole last day to sell our boat because we decided, due to our health condition, to take the slow boat from Pak Lei into the capital Vientiane the next morning instead of paddling. In the morning when the slow boat left we finally got an offer of 1000Baht (the thai currency) for Utopia, which was pretty miserable but our more or less only possibility. We just accepted… The slow boat ride was a pleasure and a nice experience, as well. They really load everthing you can imagine (cupboards, tables, rice…) into the boat, not necessary to say that the boat was nearly packed until the roof, too. You’ll have a minus on the comfort side but the enjoyable view you have compensates that. 8 hours later we arrived near the capital and another “Tuk Tuk” ride later we checked in in a nice and cheap guesthouse. Halleluja!