All Along The Mekong

All Along The Mekong

I said my personal ‘good-bye for now’ to the Philippines and flew to Bangkok to meet up with some new and old friends for a few days of visa runs and cheap computer parts at the Pantip Plaza. If you’re looking for computers or accessories and can’t find it, it’s there. Unfortunately I had a few extra trips to the Nepalese Embassy than I had hoped for. The first time I had a late start and arrived at 12:15. Turning in visa applications only occurs in the morning before 12 and pick up is the next day after 2:30. The reason I’m there at all is because I’ve been told time and time again that if you get it at the Katmandu Airport it could take a few hours to complete rather than have a 90 visa in your pocket and walk on by.

After acclimatizing in Bangkok at Cheap Charlie’s Bar a couple nights and good food at the Snapper we got up early for a flight to Vientiane, Lao where my friend lives with his wife and 8 month old. Three of us grabbed a cab and off we went. There wasn’t much traffic but we passed 100 baht to the driver for the toll highway that isn’t included in your fare. If you don’t pay it or mention it then you can get bogged down in commuter traffic on the streets of Bangkok. Add time to arrival and money to the meter. (Just FYI)

We weren’t exactly awake yet when we walked into the airport and we looked and found Bangkok Airways and there was a line out passed the zigzag portable fence. Looking at the length of the line, I won’t mention any names, but one of us thinking everybody was heading to Vientiane said quite clearly, “That’s a really big plane.” The other two of us started laughing and explained that all Bangkok Airway travelers are in this line. He felt a little silly after that but we won’t let him forget it too quickly. He’s awake now.

We pulled into Lao and the humid heat hit me with a happy welcome back. We got picked up and headed for home. It looks like we’re going to chill for a week or so before moving in any real direction. I can use the time for some projects that I’m getting close to finishing.

We took a walk down the bank of the Mekong at sunset and that’s always a good time to be out, the heat of the day has abated and the mosquitos are still in hiding until the last rays of the sun dissolve into the Thailand forest west across the Mekong.

All kinds of activities are underway at this time of day. People are out fishing along the banks, the monks are clanging bells and gongs, and everyday people, if they can, take a moment to themselves.

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Highlights Of Lao

Highlights of Lao

The most beautiful thing in Lao, an incredible country, is the Mekong River. A close second are the people, what of amazing people. To the north the mountains are sheer and full of life. The people are the same. It’s an embarrassment to me that we bombed the snot out Lao during the Vietnam conflict and they never even knew who or where we were from.

I left Pai, Thailand around the same time as two English, one from Liverpool and the other from Durham, she’s almost Scottish on our way to the Mekong River and into Lao. They took their own path with a quick stop in Chiang Mai and I turned off and went up to Thaton on the Burma border for another short beautiful boat ride down to Chiang Rai. From Chiang Rai I took an early morning van to the Mekong to the east and boarded a small riverboat to the immigration office for a one-month visa. A quick look around town and off back to the Mekong to board a big boat with more than 50 tourists and locals all heading toward Luang Prabang or Maung Pakbang, the halfway river town.

During the rainy season the Mekong swells its banks and the water runs swift with few major rapids. I found my English friends on the boat and made acquaintances from all over the world within the next two-day journey down the Mekong.

I took so many pictures in Lao its hard to pick the best ones but here are some that follow the story line.

Luang Prabang is a little touristy but definitely worth the time spent there. It’s an international melting pot of construction, food, cultures, and people. South East Asia isn’t known for their bread but France is and it shows up in Lao, Vietnam, and Cambodia. Luang Prabang has an ease about it with cafes, art galleries, and local woven fabric shops.

In the heat of the day, people can take a break at La Pistoche, a public pool area with a restaurant and bar. There’s a bowling alley that has quite the reputation with the young tourists where they party well past curfew and then go immediately to their guesthouses. There’s an Australian Sports Bar where people can find out what their favorite teams are doing and have some great food while doing it.

Some of the waterfalls in the area are amazing and refreshing again to get out of the heat if only for an afternoon. The waterfalls are only a short tuk-tuk ride from Luang Prabang and well worth the afternoon.

We took a bus over hairpin turn dirt roads over the mountains with a couple day stop on the Nong Khiaw River for some caving and sight seeing. It is a quaint little river town right on the main road crossing northern Lao through jutting limestone mountains covered in impenetrable jungle and river valleys.

The bus ride from Nong Khiaw was long and relatively uncomfortable but the scenery made up for it even at night in the torrential rain. There were landslides and fallen trees in our path but we managed without too many delays. We stopped one night in a small town and headed it out the next morning for Viengxay.

 (click on the picture to read)

Viengxay was the communist head quarters for the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Army and Vietnamese communists that were hidden out of sight while the U.S. bombed Vietnam AND Viengxay, Lao, which wasn’t in the war. The caves are an amazing feat of survival and strategically located. Even in the fields the locals would cull their cows and chickens from anything that looked domesticated so the planes flying overhead wouldn’t think there were people living there. A tribute to desire whether right or wrong. We stayed here a few days before going into Vietnam but I came back to Lao twice more and will continue with Lao and get into Vietnam next blog.

Two months later I flew into Vientiane, Lao capital, to visit a high school friend and to get two-two month visas for Thailand. He lives with his beautiful wife and newborn baby and a stack of family support on the banks of the Mekong River. Every night the sun sets to the west over the Mekong and I continued to take pictures of its beauty and of the metropolitan city. Vientiane is growing internationally into a powerhouse of South East Asia complete with massive golf courses and western grocery stores and Beer Lao. I’ll be back.

I flew south to Pakse, which is renovating a large section of its main roads down town and went directly out to 4,000 islands for a couple weeks of writing and exploring. I didn’t have to go far to find a nice place to stay. I do have to go back because I only saw a few islands and I know the deeper I go the more I’m going to like it. Of course ran into a couple from Spain and a couple from England and we had a ball fishing the Mekong and checking out the waterfalls on the Mekong. 

The Khone Phapheng Waterfalls stopped the French from turning the Mekong into a major trade route deep into western China. Explorers were convinced it could be done and spent years surveying, dynamiting, searching for a way past the falls. Time, distance, Malaria, Typhoid, jungle, heat, and rock, all warriors of South East Asia, fought against the explorers. Impressive.

4000 Islands is a tranquil place full of village life and fishing, all focused on the Mekong River and the islands. There are no main roads, just motorcycle and ox cart tracks. Life seems easy.

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Don Khone To Bangkok

Don Khone To Bangkok

I was invited to go net fishing with a local man that just wanted to show me what it was all about. I met him around 4 pm when his ferryboat job was done for the day. I hopped on a motorcycle with a side cart that I sat in and we cruised around half the island where there were no tourists just Lao locals. There were no hotels, no guesthouses, no restaurants, nor shops. Houses lined the inland side of the dirt path and palm trees lined the otherside next to the waters edge. Behind the houses was a steady green and brown of dry rice paddies waiting for the eminent rainy season. It has already started the week before and is going to continue. The road was still puddled from the rain the night before and the night before that when we were all drenched going home with lightening lighting our way.

It turned out that ‘Tiger’ took me back to a restaurant in seemingly nowhere next to a waterfall that I had been to with my English friends. Then we crossed over the suspension bridge and on down the road a ways to another larger waterfall with spacious swimming holes at its base.

This is where I sat and watched Tiger toss his net. There isn’t a lot of fish at this time of the year but when the Mekong rises 3 meters fish come rushing up river to the base of these waterfalls and no further. Fish ramps have been erected to catch fish as the water rushes and ebbs with the rains up stream.

I followed him into the water and swam around with Tiger’s nephew while Tiger threw his net, donned his mask and looked under water to see if he had caught anything under his net. Around the edge of the net were small weights and a leader string. The net is thrown and spread in the air and drops to the bottom disabling fish in the process. The mask is to see what is struggling underneath the net.

We didn’t catch any fish so we ended up ‘banking’ once again but it was worth the swim and Tiger and his nephew had brought a cooler full of beer and a cooked fish on a platter so we could eat something and chilled out while the sun went down and out of sight.

The 8 year old nephew gave me a lift back to my guesthouse on the motorcycle with the side car followed by Tiger giving instructions on how to keep the bike and myself on the dirt path and not in the drink. The kid was stressed and that made me stressed but I was prepared for the worst. When we got to the guesthouse I surprised the boy with a 10,000 kip tip. The smile on his face was priceless.

A little while later Tiger picked me up on his motorbike and he took me under the bridge and on to Don Det to see some of his friends and sing Karaoke. Of course that is not my forte, I have the singing voice of a garbage disposal.

The night ended in good cheer and a long motorcycle ride back dodging puddles and staying on track.

I had a leisurely morning on Don Khone watching the Mekong River as the sun bloomed. Eventually I had to make a move to the ferryboat and catch a bus to Pakse. Pakse is only a couple hours away and the town is rather dull at the moment. The big excitement is that the Lao government is reconstructing the roads and it is disrupting traffic rather well.

I flew back to Bangkok and was smacked in the face with traffic due to the on going protests. These groups are serious about getting rid of corruption but I fear one corrupt family will be replaced by another form of corruption. I’m convinced it’s how things are done over here; it’s in their customs, it’s part of their way of life and not actually corruption until it becomes part of the government. It appears to work rather well in the United States and other countries as well. It appears to be part of our negotiation process to get things done versus the slow methodic bureaucratic way. I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just sayin’.

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Fishing The Mekong River

Fishing The Mekong

A guide took five of us for a day of fishing on the Mekong River. We boarded around 11 o’clock and headed through a maze of waterways between the islands. The point wasn’t so much to go fishing, as it was to get out on the Mekong and see stuff and play. You remember how to play don’t you? Nothing planned and every moment becomes a new adventure with a variable outcome.

We didn’t go very far to one of the guide’s fishing holes. After we beached the boat we all got out and followed the guide down a short trail to an eddy where the current isn’t so strong and the water somewhat returns upstream in a slow moving spiral. The guide told us to be quiet because we weren’t. We watched as he ‘chummed’ the water with an ant, bug and grub mix. We watched as fish broke the surface and the guide would throw more mix in a little closer bringing the fish out of the cool depths and within range.

It was hot and there were only two poles. The guide rarely let go of his so that left only one pole to work with amongst 5 of us. I explained to my British/Spanish friends about a dear friend of mine in Alaska who I think coined the term ‘banking’. Banking involves the intension of going fishing with the freedom to sit on the bank and drink copious amounts of beer and have no pending plans for the evening. We did manage to catch fish.

Here on Don Khone there are many attractions; Irrawaddy Dolphin congregate at the south end of the island about five km down the road from the main section of a few shops, a handful of restaurants and a couple tourist agencies to help you get on your way. There a couple places to rent bikes for 10,000 kip or 2 for 15,000 kip and there are a few motorbike rentals scattered about; the roads are all dirt and puddled after a rain. Once at the south end you can pay for a boat to take you pretty much to the border and no further. On the way you will come across a bridge to Don Det, a neighboring island. Hopefully the dolphins aren’t far from the border into Cambodia, preferably on this side. There are at least three separate waterfalls with lower pools to swim. The people are very friendly and want to help you spend your money offering activities such as a full day of kayaking or fishing. Fishing usually means catch fish, have a beer and go cook the fish, all for 50,000 kip/$7.50 USD. Dinner included but beverages are not. (Such a deal).

Banking in the Mekong doesn’t necessarily mean you stay on the bank; you might be more comfortable in the water. This is not true in Alaska, the water is cold and getting seriously wet has a tendency to ruin a day of fishing and banking. Not so on the Mekong.

As day turned to night our guide ferried us back Don Khone after a great fish dinner that his wife cooked. Once home we resumed our celebration of a fine day well spent on the Mekong River.

And a universal shout out, “Travel safely and look out for each other.”

Beer goggles.

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