On the Mekong

Two days on a "slowboat" up the Mekong, from Luang Prabang to Huay Xai: I don't know whether this sounds exiting or boring... I guess it's a little bit of both. We departed from Luang Prabang at 8.30 in the morning, and I hardly had gotten any sleep the night before. Don't ask me why... the heat is only one aspect, but probably not the only one. So the first day wasn't really one to remember...
The boat was not very full, it's low season... a dozen locals, half a dozen tourists. We made our way upstream, slowly but steady. The river was running through mountaineous terrain, quite beautiful... as the water level was very low - it's the end of the dry season - there were many shallows, and sometimes I really wondered whether we would pass them or hit the ground. Rocks emerged on all sides, which would be underwater in september or october... As I said before, I was quite tired, so the day dragged on, but all in all it wasn't that bad.
In the evening we arrived in Pak Beng, where we spent the night. Due to the low water level it is impossible to run the river in darkness, but I'm not sure whether there's any traffic at night at all... Pak Beng is another "one-street town" and looks a bit like beamed here from somewhere else, a little bit out of place. It's really in the middle of nowhere, but along this one street one finds almost a dozen of guest houses and even more restaurants. The town owns its "importance" to the fact, that these two-day Mekong trips (in either direction) have become quite popular and apparently through a good part of the year this place is full of foreigners who spend the night there (I think nobody stays for two nights). The town has a couple of hundred inhabitants, maybe little more than one thousand, it is accessible by river and one unpaved road, and has currently no regular electricity supply: generators are humming until 10 o'clock in the evening, when they are turned off and it's incredibly silent then... yet there are two Indian restaurants and one German-Laotian... I wonder how they ended up here...
I slept fairly well that night, although the guest house was not exciting at all, but I felt rested the next morning. Another day on the river, which I enjoyed much more. We passed through narrow valleys, but in the afternoon the landscape opened, becoming wider, with hills and lowlands replacing the steep mountain slopes. One thing didn't change: it remained hot... the motion of the boat produced a nice breeze, but whenever we stopped to take people on board or to let them go off, the heat was immediately around us, making us sweat just by sitting around and doing nothing...
In the evening we finally arrived in Huay Xai, the border town, with Thailand being on the other side of the river. It was too late to cross, so I had to stay in Laos one more day. Again the guest house wasn't really great, but as it was for only one night, I didn't care too much.
Huay Xai is a little bigger and becoming slowly but steady important, as a road is being constructed to connect Thailand with China. Yet as I wondered through the streets, I didn't like it , somehow... I had seen more interesting river towns...
I haven't made up my mind whether I would make this two-day trip again. Maybe it would be different entering Laos through Huay Xai and going from there to Luang Prabang, the more common direction. I myself was on my way back, a little bit tired and worn out. I guess I shouldn't think too much about it. It was quite nice, travelling on the Mekong slowly through north-western Laos, passing villages, fishermen, herds of water buffaloes, children playing on the river banks...
how many opportunities are there in life to see all this?

No smoking !

Two strange words for SE Asia, with the exception of a small city in Northern Laos: Luang Prabang.
A couple of weeks ago the local authorities issued a ban on smoking in all public areas. The background: Luang Prabang is a "World Heritage Site", and I must admit that this local law fits it quite well...
Situated on the bank of the Mekong, Luang Prabang is a definite must-see in SE Asia: a wonderful mixture of French colonial architecture, Buddhist pagodas and monasteries, quiet alleyways, river life, exuberant green vegetation... all surrounded by a very tranquil ambiance and a relaxing and refreshing atmosphere..

To learn more about this magnificent small city, please employ your search engine... you will find plenty of information on the internet. As I had explained in the former post, the first days I was not too active due to a state of tiredness, which still was hovering above me. It also took away some of my fantasy, indispensable to write some interesting, maybe even entertaining posts...

The next news you will hear in three or four days, when I'm definitely on my way back... tomorrow I'll go on a two-day river journey, up the Mekong: Luang Prabang - Pak Beng - Huay Xai. From there I'll cross into Thailand, starting the final lap which will lead to Bangkok... back to reality, slowly but steady...

Tired

Maybe some noticed it... the number of posts decreased in the last weeks. Partly because I was in some more remote places, with internet access being quite expensive or not available at all... but also because I felt an increasing fatigue...
I guess it was due to the continuously high temperatures over the last weeks or months and a lack of sleep, which accompanied me for a very long time already... maybe also due to a certain dehydration, because I tend to underestimate the necessary amount of liquids I should drink... all of which again was probably leading to a debilitation of my immune system. I had developped some kind of light diarrhea, nothing serious at all, but also contributing to my general state of tiredness. It's hard to describe: I wasn't sick and didn't feel so, but I also didn't feel very fit... I simply felt tired...
So what to do? Trying to get some sleep, to rest as much as possible, to find the necessary energy again for the last weeks... sounds easy, doesn't it? If it only would be that easy...
Still, the most important thing: trying to look at it as something normal... as long as it wouldn't go on too long...