Monday, May 16, 2011

Mekong River To Thailand

On 12th May we left Luang Prabang to travel to Thailand. This entailed a 2 day slow river boat trip up the Mekong River, a total of 18 hours. The following photos show the boat we travelled in and the beautiful scenery along the way. It is a very mountainess area with very few villages nestled in the hills. On day 1 near Luang Prabang these villages were only accessible by river and not road. Very remote.

Below is a series of photos taken of the boat and the scenery. The first boat is a house boat with cargo in the front.












A typical example of the jungle we saw. Much of the land had been cleared for crops.


Day 1 was interesting as the boat's propellor hit a rock. We were travelling up river, at times through rapids. They pulled over to the side to repair the propellor. We started to wonder if we might be camping the night on the side of the river and had worked out we had enough food to get us through. But luckily they fixed it enough to keep going, even though the constant vibration was a bit much at times. But we made it. Took us a while to stop vibrating when we got off the boat.

The first night we stayed in Pakbeng. The hotel was right on the banks of the Mekong and the restaurant overlooked the river.

More scenery along the way.


























On Day 2 as we got closer to the Thailand border the area became much flatter with mountains in the background. The area was much more populated and accessible by road























The boat on day 2 was very comfortable. The seats were airline quality and we all had a double seat each. Plenty of room to spread out. And there was plenty of room to walk around and stretch the legs.





When we arrived in Thailand we managed to get straight on the bus to Chiang Rai. It was the local bus but it made pretty good time. We arrived 2 hours later. We had no idea where to stay as we didn't have the option of checking Agoda accommodation as we had no internet connection. We went with a hotel recommended by a tuk tuk driver, Chat House. It was pretty basic but had aircon so we decided to stay.

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