Day 89! Well, it’s time to leave Luang Prabang and start heading to the Thai border! Laos has been a special treat but I’m looking forward to moving on to Thailand! But first, I need to conquer the travelers SE Asia right of passage… the Laos slow boat.

I had another late night at the bowling alley, which was a blast. But I still had to wake up early!

So at 6:15am, I woke up, packed, and took a walk down the alley to the hostel I booked my slow boat ticket through.

My friends started slowly trickling in as we waited for a tuk tuk to come pick us up. While we waited, there was a gorgeous sunrise that was bright red from all the smoke!

7:10am arrived and it was time to load up for our tuk tuk ride to the slow boat dock. Six of our eight friends booked through this hostel, and we had two other random travelers joining us as well.

The tuk tuk was packed to the brim with travelers and backpacks. After a quick and bumpy ride across Luang Prabang, we piled out to the ticket counter to get sorted for the two day slow boat journey.

Strangely enough, they put all eight of us from the tuk tuk on one ticket… so even though we didn’t know everyone, one person was in charge of our fates of getting onto the slow boat on day two.

It was a gorgeous morning and I could tell it was going to be a very picturesque boat ride. Since I woke up before my hostels breakfast, I had to skip it. But I made some sweet bread and peanut butter sandwiches and called that a sufficient breakfast.

We were all exhausted, but very ready to take on the day! The boat pulled out of the dock and set off west towards the town of Pak Beng.

There were plenty of beautiful views on the ride. But for the most part, I snacked, napped, read my book, and chatted with my friends when they were awake.

We all were in and out of sleep throughout the ride and were caught our friends passed out in some goofy positions.

We passed by herds upon herds of buffalo and saw many albino ones! We also saw picture perfect villages, overlooking the river, and surrounded by palm and banana trees.

Along with that, locals were constantly getting off at their village so we stopped many times to see these villages up close. Most of the time there were kids waiting for us, excited to see us… but some were begging for food and money and it was pretty uncomfortable. I’m not exactly sure what to do in this situation, but it was an interesting one to find myself in.

We sailed on throughout the day without stopping for more than a couple minutes. My perception of time was so thrown off with how slow we were going (we were going upstream), but we went for hours and hours… it felt like it had been an hour and also 10 hours at the same time.

With this time I read a lot of my book and almost finished it! I also had some great conversations with my friends and chatted a lot with my friend Abi and learned all about their life. They’ve been an extra in tv shows and even worked as a crew member of a couple yachts, along with many other fun and cool jobs!

As the excruciatingly long journey droned on, we were met with an incredible red sunset that overlooked the hills we were riding past. It was nice that I got to see both the sunrise and sunset today!

During the sunset, we cruised past a hill that was set on fire for burning season! I wasn’t entirely sure why this was necessary here, but it created a very eerie and ominous atmosphere.

For the majority of the ride there were tourists and locals on the boat. But for the last couple of hours it was pretty much just tourists.

After a tiring 10 hour journey, we finally arrived at our destination, Pak Beng!

We were immediately met with kids asking for food again… but this time with the added element of homestay workers hounding us to stay at their guesthouse. We were warned of this and told the best option was to walk into town and just ask the guest houses to not get scammed.

It took us 3 guest houses, but we finally found one able to home our big group! Our group was even bigger at this point because a new traveler, Izzy, asked to join us. Two guys on our boat ticket joined us as well to make our group 10 people at the moment!

We ended up having to split up to two a room and I shared a room with my friend Dan.

We were all delirious and starving. So after getting our rooms, we threw our bags on the floor and walked down the street to a nearby Indian restaurant.

While waiting for our food we played a round of Shithead and also a word riddle game called silly sally.

I got another Indian dish with potato’s in it and I think this might be one of my favorite Indian dishes now!

After dinner, we walked to a nearby bar where we chatted the night away and then headed back to our dorms to get some rest before our next long travel day.

Today was quite the haul. Sure I didn’t have to drive myself on a motorbike and the weather was nice. But sitting in one spot for 10 hours was exhausting! It was very nice getting to read a lot and have good conversations though.

Tomorrow we set off on the next slow boat and we need to be at the dock at 7:30am! It’ll be another very long day as we’ll be crossing the Thai border by land and then getting a bus to the northern Thai city called Chiang Rai (one I didn’t have the time to check out my first time)!

Looking forward to another slow ride!

– Elie