Tuesday 6 March 2012

The slow boat to Luang Prebang

Got on the boat at 9 only to be told that it didn't leave until 12. That kinda pissed me off as I really could have done with the extra sleep. I also feeling a bit weak and ill so I wasn't really looking forward to a whole day spent on a busy boat. Along with a Canadian girl from the hotel I was staying at there was also a group of 3 guys from new zealand, a couple and a guy by himself. I was in a pretty foul mood and couldn't be dealing with small talk so I tried to get some sleep while they all discussed real world shit (politics, jobs, economy etc). Then this English twat thought he'd be helpful by waking me up in case I got sun burnt. I suppose he meant well, but he was just one of these people who'd been travelling for a while, was wearing those gay cotton trousers that hippy douches wear and thought he knew everything about travelling and preached instead of discussing. Then after waking me up, he then tried to engage me in conversation by saying the dreaded phrase "so, how long have you been travelling for" at which point I just told him that I'm feeling rough and not in the mood to talk. There's no completely polite way of telling someone you just don't want to speak to them but I tried to be nice about it and he told me that's fair enough. So eventually we arrived at the halfway town where we where to spend the first night. I'd perked up a little and was chatting to the guys nearby (the Canadian and the NZ 3) and we agreed to all get somewhere to stay together. Getting off the boat we where bombarded with people selling hotel rooms and heroin (no really!) so the NZ girl managed to sort us out with a room for 3 and a double room for her and her BF with hot water and a really cheap price. I'd been told by loads of people that the town was really over priced but the place we stayed at was a pretty good bargain.

The next morning I woke up feeling great, all I really needed was a good nights sleep. We headed down to the boat and it was already full. We'd heard that they sometimes do some sneaky tricks with the boats and cram loads of people onto fewer boats so as there where no seats left we kicked off with the boat guys and told them to get another boat. This didn't work exactly how we'd hoped, it actually worked out better. They put us on the boat but right at the back in the kitchen. We had our own little area, seats and as we'd complained they agreed to give us some free whiskey laos. so I set up the ipod and speakers and we cracked open the whiskey. The NZ girl managed to get a pack of Uno cards from a helpful German girl called Suzanne (more on her later) which we turned into a drinking game. Then the captain came over with the whiskey Laos, which was he poured from a 2 liter bottle of castrol GTX oil! The next 5 hours sailed by and by the time we got off the boat we where all pretty hammered. somehow we made it to a hotel, checked in and headed out to a fancy restaurant that we'd been recommended by someone I'd met on the border cross. The NZ girl was easily the most pissed of us all, probably because she was about 4 foot tall, skinny and didn't eat much all day. She was pretty funny though and I really got on with her boyfriend. Somehow we'd worked it so that the three NZ guys where in a room together and I was in a room with the canadian girl so I practised my newly learnt massage skills on her :-)

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