We rose very early this morning to leave Chiang Rai by 6 AM to make our way to Chiang Khong, a town in the far northeast of Thailand where we caught the boat to cross the Mekong River into Laos. Our first river crossing was in a very small, wooden longboat, which somehow handled all of us (9) plus our luggage and a couple of extra families as well with luggage! Once we got through passport control and obtaining visas we had a tuk-tuk ride to our boat for the long journey to Pakbeng. The journey takes about six hours by boat. It’s a beautiful, although rather small, wooden boat with booths to sit in, open windows, and a seating area with what look like seats taken from cars. We all opted for the booths. The family that is driving the boat actually live on it. We are in the public area and they have a private area at the back where they live and cook. They cooked our lunch which was, again, very tasty, and we noticed both the continuities and similarities to Thai cuisine and some subtle differences. The spices in the Lao food are more subtle and the food is somewhat more basic.
The scenery along the way is gorgeous. Mountains rise up on both sides of the river and you can see the fields where the farmers are planting their rice and corn crops on the hills. Dotted along the hills are little huts, with thatched roofs, which are rest huts for the farm workers. The fields are so far from their villages that the workers take food with them so that they can have lunch out in the fields and then take a brief nap before returning to work for the afternoon. The huts provide shelter from rain in this rainy season and from the sun in the dry season.
Our Lao guide, Lit, gave us a Lao language lesson. We learned basic words and phrases to get us through simple exchanges with local folks. Laos has only opened itself to tourism in the past two to three years, so they are not as well versed or well prepared for tourists as is Thailand. From what we have seen so far, Laos is clearly a poorer country than Thailand and the standard of living across the board is lower than Thai standard of living. We made a stop along the river to visit a Hmong village on the river’s edge. That was a sobering experience because it is really a classic example of developing world poverty. The families live in thatched huts with dirt floors. All the children sleep on one pallet in one corner of the room and the parents sleep in a sectioned off area of the room. There is no light inside the hut so it is very dark inside and the family cooks over an open fire which smokes the place up considerably but is helpful because it keeps the mosquitos away. There were swarms of children following us through the village, offering handicrafts for sale. Hmong people allow polygamy and have many, many children. And they have them young. In the house we visited the mother is only 16 years old and she has at least 4 children already. She also shares her husband with a couple of other women who also have multiple children. The men were away in the fields working so we saw only women and children during our visit. The children are educated in Laotian schools and they learn Lao language in addition to their Hmong dialect. But the absence of basic sanitation, access to clean water, and health care was glaring. We saw some satellite dishes and one hut/home had a TV going so they have some electricity in some of their buildings but it is very limited. The children were dressed in dirty and ragged clothing however, and none of them looked as though they had been bathed recently and they were all barefoot. The children were gorgeous and cute and lively, but we all felt so badly about the conditions under which they are living. Our guide said that the Hmong are usually “highland Laotians” meaning they live on the tops of the mountains, so the fact that these Hmong are down at the river’s edge is unusual. The reason, apparently, is that the Lao government received substantial sums of money from the US government to move them to the lowlands to cut down on illegal growing of opium crops, and the US money was supposed to go towards providing subsidies for the villages so that they could have a decent standard of living and find jobs. Government corruption, however, has ensured that the Hmong villagers are not benefiting from the money the US has sent over for them.
Our ride on the river took about 6 hours at which time we arrived at Pakbeng, a small village on the shores of the river. We are staying at a beautiful lodge right on the water. Our rooms overlook the river and we have a terrace to sit on looking out on the river and the mountains on the other side. It is very hot and humid, however, and there is no air conditioning here so we are trying to get used to being very sticky until we get to Luang Prabang tomorrow and back into an air conditioned hotel. We took a walk through Pakbeng, which takes only about 15 minutes as it is a very small village and we wandered through the market. We will have dinner here at the lodge and then, I suspect retire early as there is not much else to do and we’ve been up since 4:30 this morning. Tomorrow we have another 8 hours on the river to get to Luang Prabang.
The pictures here show our boat looking towards the back, a view of the mountains from the river, which is the scenery we’ve been enjoying all day, a shot of a couple of the Hmong children we saw today and our hotel. It’s been a full day. More tomorrow.
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