I sleep better than I expected - a solid seven hours - and wake up ready to face the day. The basic breakfast (and two cups of Nescafe) fortify me and, along with everyone else, I jump in the pick-up truck that brought us up here and will take us back down to the water. As we bum along the road on the short journey, I wonder what this village looked like before tourists starting making this ‘pit stop’ here on the slow boat. More poverty-stricken no doubt, but less commercialised too.
We all hop out and I look for our boat
It’s not there. I look again. No, it’s really not there. In its place is something else - a vessel that makes my heart sink. Old, battered, a rickety, clapped-out thing with far less room inside and almost no padded seats! Even worse, not only are all the comfy seats taken, the boat is already packed and it’s only 8.30 am.
There’s no jetty, no pier, not even a proper path. I stumble over the rocks and suddenly go flying. I land on my back (quite violently) and when I look down I see I’ve gashed my leg.
Two crew members grab my pack and then two young British backpackers kindly pick me up and ask me if I’m ok. I nod, half-heartedly, and stumble inside, where I do the best I can to tend to my wound with antiseptic and a bandage from my medical kit.
Our of the corner of my eye I see a similar boat to ours not a meter away, children without shoes playing on it. Its insides are just like the one I’m on and it’s definitely seen better days. I’m guessing our ‘comfy’ boat is now back in Huay Xai, picking up the next lot of passengers. That’s a nice little ‘switcharoo’ they’ve pulled.
I sense this ‘boat swap’ is not a good omen for the day ahead.
The boat is pretty crowded, far more so than yesterday, filled with backpackers, local people, a portly Buddhist monk (around 50?) and four young boys (his novices I suppose), all in bright saffron robes, heads shaved, small but wide-eyed and with long black lashes.
I grab a window seat on a hard bench, swallow two painkillers and settle in.
The boat gets more and more full. Every time I think we’re ready to depart, more passengers show up. Soon, people are sitting on the floor. The captain finally fires up the engine at 9.16 and we’re off. However, unlike yesterday, there’s only one toilet and hand sink on the boat, which (to put it politely) is pretty basic.
Also, unlike yesterday, this day passes agonisingly slowly. My back aches from my fall, my foot is throbbing and the seat is uncomfortable. It’s blisteringly hot outside and the humidity must be over 70%...there’s a slight breeze but hardly enough to stop me sweating profusely. All the elan of yesterday is gone, especially because we’re stopping constantly to let locals jump on and off.
In the next few hours, I will offer my spare part of the bench to an old man, a young woman with a baby and then a teenager who proceeds to call his friend over. The two of them plonk themselves down in what is one space and are soon spilling over into mine.
It will be like that for another three and a half hours - hot, cramped, exhausting. When I hobble down the boat’s gangway to the toilet (there’s an incredibly long queue) I see that the back of the boat is now also jammed - a mixture of locals and backpackers. You can barely see the floor.
I think back to when I travelled around Latin America, Africa and India in similar conditions but remind myself that I was younger then, had more stamina, regarded it all as a great adventure. I don’t feel that way now - I feel bad-tempered, sticky, in pain and slightly sick from the fact that the boat’s hit choppy waters.
A woman two benches behind me starts throwing up in a plastic bag. The old guy in front of me smokes several cigarettes and because (a) I don’t speak Lao (b) can’t bring myself to deprive him of this one small pleasure I say nothing and literally ‘suck it up’.
And then - the piece de resistance - a couple of guys get on holding a live pig. It’s hog-tied and very much alive - squealing in distress, no doubt because it knows its days are numbered. I presume it’s being taken somewhere to be slaughtered, perhaps for a festival, to mark a birthday or just as a gift to a local family.
I have no appetite, I’m in pain, the toilet is not something I want to use (and not flushing) and I’ve really had enough.
I am not alone, considering the exhausted and resigned faces I spy all around me. The general consensus, I’m thinking, is that one day on the river would have been fine. Maybe two, if we’d had the decent boat to travel with. But with the crowds and the chaos and the declining sanitary situation in the solitary bathroom, it’s all a bit too much.
When we finally dock, I struggle to climb the steep stairs up to land and another kindly lad carries my backpack for me. There are no taxis, just tuktuks lined up, waiting for us to part with our cash to take us into town. They could have dropped us in right in the centre of Luang Prabang but this is a good way to earn extra money. I don’t care any more. I just want a hot shower and a comfortable bed and I’m willing to pay over the odds for it.
The question is, was it a mistake? Let me sleep on it and I’ll get back to you.
To be continued…