Scenes from a Boat

The slow boats of the Mekong in Laos.

Day 7 (Jan. 30): I'm on a boat (!) in Laos.
Here's a short and sweet account of the day I spent riding a boat down the Mekong for six hours. I arrived at the pier in Huay Xai not too long before the boat left (the lack of scheduled departure time notwithstanding, everyone "knows" you should get there before 11am), so I just took the first seat I saw available. Fortunately for me, it wasn't one of the minivan carseats crammed into rows along the length of the boat, but part of a pair of minivan carseats set facing one another. This meant more legroom for me and the three others with me, although anyone who walked down the aisle of the long and narrow boat had to step over our legs. Anyway, what made it fortunate was that I got to spend the entirety of my trip getting to know three very fun and interesting folks: Greg, Corine, and Ian.

Probably not the most flattering photo of them, but +1 for capturing personality and +1 for mangosteens!

The latter two were friends traveling together; both are from England, but Ian teaches English in Malaysia while Corine teaches English in Japan. They were extremely pleasant to talk to and joke around with. Corine in particular was one of the funniest people I've ever met. She had a tendency to say pretty much anything that came to mind, without filtering it or even subconciously judging the conversational environment for relevance. This led to quite a few hilarious non sequiturs, which I remember for their hilarity rather than their actual content. Corine and Ian had a good rapport: she would talk, and he would explain, and they played off each other quite well.

Even better, though, was the discovery that both of them loved to play word games! I was reading a book at some point in the mid-afternoon when I saw them get out paper and pens and begin playing Boggle. "Genius!" I thought. You don't need the letter cubes to play; you can simply think of random letters and write them down, et voila. Noticing my obvious interest, they invited me to play the next few rounds, and the epic Mekong Boggle Tournament was born. Well, it wasn't that epic. But it was loads of fun. I had my books and my camera, but playing word games with new friends was the absolute best way to pass the time.

A monk on a riverbank.

As for Greg, he lands squarely in the top 10 list of Most Interesting People I've Met. He's a 교포, half-Korean and half-White American, and -- surprise -- he teaches English in Korea! That was a good jumping off point, but Greg is the kind of person who probably doesn't need to have anything in common with you to engage you in some serious talk about anything. With tons of travel experience, he had a lot of great advice for the rest of us on getting around Laos. In fact, he could speak Lao and bits of Thai, because he'd been going back to the country regularly for the past ten years or so.

The more I talked to Greg, the more impressive his story got. He held very strong opinions against America, capitalism, and technology, explaining that he'd found the quiet and laid-back modus vivendi in parts of South America (Guatemala) and Southeast Asia (Thailand and Laos) to be a much more human way to live. He even told us about the family he'd sort of "adopted" since his first visit. There's a single mother with five children who lives in a tiny village perched on the banks of the Mekong; after meeting her and her family for the first time about a decade ago, he has returned a dozen times with gifts, living necessities, photographs, and a genuine offer of friendship. In turn, he has become a part of the family. I'll write more about this later, but suffice it to say that as I got to know Greg on the boat, I realized I was talking to someone quite unlike anyone I'd ever known.

So that's how I spent the boat ride: making new friends, taking photos of the pretty (if repetitive) scenery, reading, napping, and avoiding the overpriced snacks. Here are some of those photos:

It wasn't just a boat for tourists; we stopped periodically to take on more passengers and cargo.

Lovely natural scenery along the Mekong. It's dotted with villages, and more roads are being built, but for the most part, it's just brown water, green trees, and blue sky.

And this is what everyone on the boat tends to look like after six hours... ("Ugh get me off")

Me in Pakbeng in the late afternoon! Fog is already starting to roll in.

Our boat arrived in Pakbeng shortly before 5pm. I found Jesse again, who had teamed up with Chris, a guy I vaguely remembered from the hostel in Chiang Mai, and the three of us found a guesthouse in the Podunk of Laos. I have no travel recommendations for Pakbeng: every guesthouse is basically the same -- cheap and spare, but comfortable -- and the restaurant food is all overpriced, but what can you do? There's nowhere else to go. The locals here are smart. I enjoyed dinner, anyway, and we spent our evening quietly; I taught Jesse and Chris how to play Big 2, tried my first Beerlao (which is just as good as it's hyped up to be), and fought a losing battle with the "free WiFi" that is advertised in every building. As if!

I bought a sausage from this smiling lady whose grill was billowing smoke so thick it stung my eyes.

Spiderboy playing with fire, quite literally.

The next stop was supposed to be Luang Prabang, the most beautiful city in the country. Instead, my next would turn out to be a tiny village perched on the banks of the Mekong...

The People I Met on the Train

You have all been clamoring for knowledge of my whereabouts, naturally. I started an ambitious series of posts about my travels in Thailand and Laos, and then dropped off the face of the Internet for a week! My apologies. I went to North Korea, where there is essentially no Internet access, and I felt that it would be best to tell as few people as possible. In due time, I will write all about it. But first -- that overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai!

The dining car of the train. At night, it turns into a party car. I loaded up on snacks back at the station so that I would never have to come here.

Day 3-4 (Jan. 26-27): I rode a sleeper train for 18 hours from Bangkok to Chiang Mai.
I got all of my travel information from blogs and Seat61. That website is fantastic and has reliable, easy-to-understand information. My ticket was bought for me by a friend who went to a local train station (not even the main station, Hualamphong, so I guess you can buy tickets anywhere as long as you can speak Thai) the morning of my departure. My train was to leave around 6pm on the 26th and arrive at 8am the following day. Well, that didn't happen.

It left about fifteen minutes late, and that was just the beginning of things. I wasn't paying attention to the timeliness, but for each of the half-dozen stops we made, the train was getting further and further behind schedule. Often it had to pull to a side track to let other trains pass. We eventually arrived in Chiang Mai 3.5 hours late!

You'd think that this eternally slow train ride would have been insufferably boring, but fortunately, it was quite the opposite. Although my car was half-empty when I boarded at Bangkok, it continually filled up with people throughout the night. In my second-class sleeper car, about half the passengers were Thai people, and the other half were fellow travelers. I met quite a number of characters, including a South Dakotan named Steve who has retired in Thailand and spends his days drinking and bumming around in Chiang Mai and a friendly French couple.

Following Thai politics and the protests.

Steve wore an ivory pendant carved into the shape of an elephant and a large, khaki-colored short-sleeved shirt. He ordered the somewhat pricey dining car dinner and beer at night and talked at me about his travels. He ordered the somewhat pricey dining car coffee the next morning and talked at me about his time in Vietnam and why he decided he'd never go back to America. When I offered my two cents on American politics, he seemed like he couldn't be bothered to voice his disagreement. We lapsed into silence. I read the Thai newspaper he had on him, with reports on the forthcoming elections, the king's offer to cover hospital bills for victims of protest violence, and the warrants issued for the arrest of the opposition party's leaders. He read my copy of David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, but stopped after a few pages and looked out the window instead. "I can tell this is the kind of book that's going to make me think more than I want to," he said. The view of the Thai countryside from the train windows was lovely.

Gwen and Xavier had the seat/bunks across the aisle from mine. I heard them speaking in French but was too shy at first to hop into their conversation. Fortunately, at that time Steve had stationed himself in my seat/bunk, since his had been converted into beds too early, and he wanted his beer and conversation. He talked at the French couple, but it was difficult because Xavier was not too good at English, and Steve was also noticeably hard of hearing. I added to the conversation in English until Steve went to bed, after which I switched to French and talked to Gwen and Xavier about traveling and the exciting things they were planning for their time in Thailand.

Later on in the evening, we were joined by another French man, who if I recall correctly was also named Steve. He had messy, wispy blond hair and was dressed in baggy clothes that could have been local garb, although the locals here wear jeans and t-shirts. French Steve had already met every single French person on our train, walking up and down the cars, and he also spoke fluent English. He had just arrived from the diner car -- which is turned into a party car complete with lights an dancing at night -- when we met. Immediately, French Steve was delighted by the fact that I was American but had studied French for years. He introduced me to a bunch of other French travelers on the same train later:

Steve: He speaks French!
French woman traveling with her mother: Haha, okay.
Steve: No, really! He's from California but he speaks French! Without an accent!
French woman: Wait, you're not kidding?
Me: Um, hello.
French woman: Oh, hello!

The conversation was even more awkward because the French woman was already in her bunk bed, ready to sleep. These are the fold-down bunk beds. The seat/bunks also fold out to create more spacious beds on the bottom. I was in a top bunk.

I'm not going to lie; I know my French isn't perfect, but I was very pleased that a few months abroad in France helped me improve my accent enough that a random French person would compliment me on it. It's different from when Koreans tell me my Korean is really good, because I know Koreans only say that out of, like, habit or something and that my Korean is actually rather poor for the amount of time I've been studying it. But the French are stingy with their praise, aren't they? So I was happy and really enjoyed passing the evening doing language exchange on the train with Gwen, Xavier, and French Steve.

The ride was smooth and time really flew by. I brushed my teeth in the bathroom car and then went to sleep in my seat/bunk, which had been folded out to make a very small but cozy bed, reachable by a narrow ladder. There was a curtain for privacy and a small pocket for my valuables. I felt safe and comfortable, if a bit claustrophobic. It was kind of like sleeping in a lighted coffin. I woke up a few times in the night when the train would stop, but it wasn't bad at all. And in the morning, the view outside was quite pretty, as I've already said.

Fields in northern Thailand, framed by the train window.

We arrived in Chiang Mai a little after noon on the 27th. American Steve offered to split a hotel room, but I'd already planned on staying at a certain hostel. I walked into town with yet another French person, chatting and being thankful that I'd chosen to walk instead of take a tuk-tuk on this beautiful day. Adventures in Chiang Mai await!