Slow Boat Trip Down the Mekong

I got to the city of Huay Xai, Laos right on the border of Thailand. We had to cross the Mekong here by boat. When I got into the country the first thing I did was exchange some money. The exchange rate is about 10,000 kip to the dollar. I exchanged about $70 worth. I had never held so much cash in my hand at once. I felt like a millionaire. My wallet would barely close there were so many bills in it. We proceeded to a little port in the town where a bunch of slow boats were waiting. A slow boat is a long wooden boat that is about 60 feet long and 8 feet wide and, of course, slow. The boats are usually packed from front to back with little benches that someone of my height has no chance of fitting in to. We were fortunate enough to wait until the first boat filled up. I say fortunate because they made another boat available for the rest of us waiting that only had about 8 rows of seats and the rest was just empty space where you could lay out and weren't so cramped. We also had our own bar on the boat selling food and drinks. The people who boarded this boat were all excited backpackers, like me, and made for a real good crowd to spend two days with. Since it was the rainy season in Southeast Asia, the views of the banks of the Mekong were interrupted by brief spells of torrential downpour. When it wasn't raining the landscape of rural Laos was revealed. Huge undulating mountains stretching down to the water were covered in alternating patches of dense jungle and crop fields. The fields had evidence of local tribes using slash and burn techniques to prepare for a new planting season. The hill tribes lived in little villages of anywhere from 5 to 20 huts made out of bamboo. Along the way I saw Lao people using elephants in the jungle to drag huge logs to boats, lizards strung on to poles for a meal later, monks boarding the boat going to the next village, Lao children playing in the murky waters, weird fish being pulled from the water with nets or bamboo poles, and the most shocking, a man dragging a boar by its hind leg to a village for what I presume would be a feast or sacrifice. Everything I saw on the journey reminded me that I was in an authentic hilltribe area deep in the hills of Laos. It was one of the most rewarding experiences I have ever had. We stopped that night in a little town of dirt streets and 6 hours of electricity a night, called Pakbeng. The guesthouse we stayed in had two 7-foot bombs right at the entrance with "US" painted on their sides. You probably have not heard of this, but Laos is famous for being the most bombed country in the world. The United States gets credit for giving Laos this distinction. During the Vietnam War, the US carpet-bombed Laos as North Vietnamese troops were using the "neutral" country as a gateway for supplies. The stat goes that if you dropped one plane load of bombs every eight minutes around the clock for 12 years, you would just then equal as much as we dropped on the country. There was nothing in the American news about the US bombing Laos for five years. Pretty amazing stat if you ask me. The remoteness of the town and lack of electricity ended up being a perfect setting for stargazing. You could see so many stars that you could barely make out the constellations. The next day we continued down the Mekong to a city called Luang Prabang. The whole trip took two days and was a great way to see the back country of Laos that can only be accessed through a slowboat down the Mekong.