Taking it Slow in Laos: Mekong River and Luang Prabang

After the adrenaline rush of the Gibbon Experience the past few days, ziplining across jungle valleys and launching in and out of treehouses like Tarzan, it was time to slow it down a notch. Luckily for us, Laos has a lot of slow. There’s a Lao saying that roughly goes, “Westerners may have a watch, but the Lao have all the time.” For once, time was aplenty as we rode the slow boat down the Mekong River.

At 10:00am, we arrived at the banks of the river, at kilometer marker 332 of the Mekong. We walked down the embankment and laid eyes on our steed for the next two days—our Nautilus, our Pequod, our Orca (we had to look all three of those up). The covered wooden boats that make the slow boat journey were narrow, in order to navigate the shallow waters of the river during the dry season. Crossing a rickety wooden plank, we boarded one of the many slim vessels bobbing on the calm waters and deposited our gear under the floorboards at the front of the boat before heading to our seats. We then took our place along with 100 or so other people, on a boat that maybe fit 75 (wait for it, wait for it...“We’re gonna need a bigger boat!”). The captain did not mention anything about life vests under the seats, safety precautions, or anything of the sort; because the boat sat only a few feet above the water line, there probably wasn’t a lot of mustering to practice. (He did, however, spend ten minutes trying to sell us on a deal for a guesthouse in Pak Beng, the village at the halfway point where all of us would spend the night. Instead of buying into his sham, we quickly went onto Booking.com while we still had cell service from our Thai SIM cards and found a place of our own for that night.) The boat left rather not promptly at 11:30am, and off we went, beginning the two-day, couple-hundred-mile journey from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang, chugging down the river, slowly and steadily.

Now, there are certainly more luxurious ways to cruise the Mekong. A handful of companies operate impressive river boats one might envision plying the ole’ Mississippi, with spacious decks and stately dining tables. And there are also faster ways to get down the Mekong, as demonstrated by the speed boats that zipped by us and shot through the rocky channels with reckless abandon (that the riders wear helmets is a testament to how safe that method is, considering most of them don’t even wear helmets on motorbikes). But only one boat features ripped-out old car benches for seats, an engine chugging on the deck inside the boat (luckily we sat closer to the front, away from the noise and smell), and, most importantly, a bar in the back serving cold Beer Lao (Bee Lao is, in our opinion, the best of the Southeast Asian beers), all for the price of just $26 per person for the two days: the slow boat.

Before roads started to connect the major towns in Laos in the 1990s (!), river trips were the country’s main intercity mode of transportation. Though the slow boats on the Mekong today are mostly transporting tourists, river boats are still an important form of rural transportation for the Lao people. Many of the small villages throughout the country are still only accessible by water.

Luckily, we passed the two days with our new Gibbon friends, all traveling downstream after the Gibbon Experience, so the voyage wasn’t boring. Like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, we reoriented the 1990 Toyota Highlander benches into an alcove of sorts, such that we were all sitting around each other in a semi-circle instead of in rows, making it more conducive to drink Beer Lao and play games. We had a hilarious time playing Telephone Pictionary, in which the first person starts with a commonly known phrase, which the next person then has to draw out, followed by the next person who then needs to come up with a phrase for that drawing (without seeing the original phrase), and so on and so forth, alternating between hand-drawn pictures and words. Drawing has never been Michael’s strong point, nor the strong point of many of the others in our group (except for the one actual artist), so hilarity ensued. More card games also filled the hours between Telephone Pictionary. At the end of the day, between the three-day Gibbon Experience, two full days on the slow boat, and a couple of days together in Luang Prabang before we all went our separate ways, the eight of us had spent a full week together as a group and became rather close. We left with promises to all meet up again somewhere down the road in other Southeast Asian countries.

Other than playing games, we passed the time in the usual way, with some reading, blogging, and listening to music. There was also a lot of looking “outside” (the boat was open air), watching a steady stream of green hills and rocky outcroppings quietly pass by. One of the most amazing things about the journey was seeing just how little civilization there is between Huay Xai and Luang Prabang. Other than Pak Beng, itself just a cluster of guesthouses, or the occasional village on the hillside, there was really nothing much between these two provincial towns. When the boat did stop to drop off some of the few locals on the boat, we were literally in the middle of nowhere. Pulling up to the banks of the river, the locals would jump out with their personal sacks and disappear into the forest like a Lao version of Field of Dreams. But other than the occasional stop, there was just jungle, empty in its vast denseness.

Which makes what the U.S. military did in Laos in the late 1960s and early 1970s all the more crazy.

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. flew half a million bombing missions into neighboring Laos. It was called the Secret War, since the CIA orchestrated the covert operation without much international coverage. Much of the bombing was intended to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail along the border with Vietnam, but the rest of the country (15 out of 17 provinces)—where the communist Pathet Lao were vying for control with the Royalists—also saw sustained bombing. When the war ended, the U.S. had dropped over two million tons of bombs onto that desolate jungle, which equates to an average of one bomb every eight minutes over the course of almost a decade. To put that into perspective, more tonnage was dropped on Laos than was used in the entirety of World War II, giving Laos the unfortunate title of being the most bombed country in the world.

We learned all this history at the UXO Museum in Luang Prabang, our final destination at the end of the slow boat journey. Unfortunately, we also learned that the war did not end for the Lao people when the bombings stopped, as many unexploded ordnance (UXO) still remain throughout the countryside. The issue is that many of the bombs the U.S. dropped were cluster bombs; instead of one large bomb that explodes on impact, a cluster bomb releases hundreds of small baseball-sized bombs, called “bombies,” not all of which detonate. In fact, they are designed so that a third of them don’t explode right away; indeed, of the 240 million bombies dropped over Laos, an estimated 80 million remain unexploded, lurking beneath rice paddies and buried near rural villages to this day.

Since the end of the war, an average of one person per day has been injured or killed by UXO, many of them children. Those who survive are often debilitated for life, left with the loss of a limb, blindness, or other significant physical disability. The UXO Museum showed graphic videos of survivors and their heartbreaking encounters with UXO, including farmers who were plowing their field when they struck a bombie and kids who were playing in their front yards when they found and picked up a round metal object, thinking it was a toy. It was difficult to watch and extremely tragic, but also important to see, especially for Americans who don’t learn as much about the Secret War as we do about the Vietnam War.

Since 2008, that UXO toll is down to about one injury or death every two weeks. The progress, if you can call it that, stems not from clearing UXO (though there is a program that clears thousands of acres per year, which Obama supported in 2016), but more from the education of villagers. At schools, they teach kids to be careful when digging or playing in the dirt, what a bombie looks like so that they can differentiate one from a toy, and what to do in the event they do find UXO (leave it alone and tell the adults!). These are all positive advancements, but it is still incredibly sad that this has become required curriculum.

Thankfully, Luang Prabang, which remained out of the hands of the Pathet Lao during the war, was spared by the U.S. bombings and subsequent UXO legacy. The city was once an important center of Buddhism, then a French Indochina colonial city/getaway, and now an incredibly beautiful and relaxing place to visit. Located on the banks of the Mekong River at its confluence with the Nam Khan River, the small city is carved out of the same wilderness we saw on our two days on the slow boat. It has great views of the surrounding wild, but inside, it has tamed the jungle. Cobblestone pathways with purple bougainvillea draping over them hug the riverbanks, flanked by outdoor patio seating for the restaurants across the street. Inside the city, well-preserved, two-story colonial buildings, outlined with dark wood trim, line the narrow streets and alleyways. Interspersed between luxury hotels, hostels, and many coffee shops and restaurants (most housed in such colonial era buildings), are active Buddhist temples, where monks from around the country come to study. Luang Prabang is a unique blend of authenticity and tourism, new and old, urban and rural, luxury and backpacker.

Having visited Luang Prabang only three years ago, we were excited to be back again to stroll the beautiful streets. We walked the full length of the old city many times, from the end of the peninsula to the Royal Palace. We climbed up Mount Phousi once again to watch a beautiful sunset (along with seemingly everyone in the city at that time), and meandered along the banks of the Nam Khan and the Mekong. We navigated the night market to find the local food section tucked in a back alley, enjoying fresh, grilled Mekong River fish. On the opposite end of the dining spectrum, we ate a delicious, six-course Lao fusion meal at Tamarind (for only $12 each), as well as other well-prepared dinners at the excellent restaurants of Yuni Yupoun and Café Toui.

But mostly, being back in Luang Prabang was about taking it easy (this is a theme for places we’ve visited before, such as Chiang Mai). Though we did spend one day out exploring the dramatic mountain scenery along the Mekong River at Pak O village (we couldn’t get enough of river life, apparently), we mostly spent our four days walking slowly, lingering at various coffee shops throughout the city, and of course, drinking some Beer Lao. Happily, we also spent a lot of time with friends: we met up with the two Irish girls with whom we had hiked and biked in Myanmar, and then met up several times with our Gibbon friends at Utopia and Dyen Sabai, which are great hangout spots with views of the city’s seasonal bamboo bridge across the lazy Nam Khan.

Though we did not travel to as much of the country as we expected or wanted to this time around, we did feel like we were able to truly channel our inner Lao —first as we became part of the slow river current, and then as we watched it drift by, letting time slowly melt away.

Karen & Michael

Mekong River and Luang Prabang, Laos, December 4 - 9, 2019