Slow Boat to Laos

For the last 3 days I have slowly been making my way to Luang prabang, which is i the north of Laos. I left Chang Mai, and Selim on Wednesday and took a minibus to Chang Khong on the Thai/Laos border. I stayed one night in Chang Khong, which was a terribly dingy, uninteresting town and in the morning caught a ferry accross the Mekong to Huay Xai in Laos.

The mornings here are so foggy that when I first wwnt down to the river I could hardly even see 1 meter in front of myself and walking around leaves you with dew in your hair.

From Huay Xai I joined a boatload of tourists and several locals o a slow boat traveling down the river to Luang prabang. The boat was lovely, if a bit over crowded and gave ample time to read, listen to music, meet other travelers and think about life in general. The landscape that we were passing through was truly amazing. Towering peaks covered in dense jungle decending down to the waters edge where there were huge jagged rocks. We passed several villages that were miles from anywhere and watched locals going about their washing and fishing in the river.

After 6 hours on the first day, we stopped in Pakbeng overnight, which is by relative standards, a failry large town along the river, but in reality is is quite small and really only caters to the passing river traffic. I was lucky enough to book ahead from Huay Xai and get on of the few guest houses with electricity, but even then it was only until 10pm.

We had dinner in a wonderful little place that had only opened 2 weeks ago. Our host had just been married (at the ripe old age of 23), and had decided to expand his soup table into a restaurant. The kitchen was nothing more than a hut and his menu was hand written in english. After dinner he chatted with us about Laos and his former life as a monk. He had been a monk for 10 years!

Yesterday was much of the same. Traveling down the river for 8 hours. Very relaxing.

Arriving in Luang Prabang was very pleasant. I'm sharing a room with a Canadian girl, called Donna, who is nice and talks way to fast for my Italian friend, Gianny. Stangely, there is not one other Australian amoung us.

Luang Prabang is a great town, and the french influence shows through in lots of places. Particularily with the food, there is a lot more garlic and their are bakeries everywhere. But they still serve take away soup in plastic bags, it's great! But kinda tricky to eat.

Traditional food is noodle soup, which is fairly bland, but they use all the spices on the table make it to their taste. Another good one is spicey papaya salad. I'm eating my way around this country. I'm going to try and do a cooking course before I leave .