PART 2: MIGHTY MEKONG

22-23 July 2013. Days 6 & 7 of 15. 
Mekong River Cruise, Don Cheang LAOS, Huay Xai LAOS (border), Chiang Kong THAILAND (border). 
Overnights in Don Cheang LAOS & Chiang Kong THAILAND. 

Waking up from a 5hr deep sleep is a tough job. It was 1am by the time I said "good night" to Larry the night before and we had to be up at 6am in order to leave the hotel by 7am for our two day cruise and home stay along the Mekong. It was overcast and sprinkling as the large tuk-tuk ferried us down to our boat about 30min out of town. By 8am we were chugging down the river with a straight six diesel behind us, a very long and narrow open cabin with canopy in the middle and 12 backpacks plus one red Virgin sports bag at the front.

There is even a little Buddha shrine with incense and offerings over the engine which I was told is for its reliability! What a river. The views of the swirling Mekong and surrounding bush were both impressive and relaxing. Today we would be traveling approx 145km upstream to our overnight home stay at a tiny village called Don Cheang with a local family belonging to the "Khmu" ethnic group. Tomorrow we would set off again at 6:30am to travel a further 155km to Houay Xai in Laos just before the Thai border. That's 10hrs on day 1 and another 11hrs on day two.

Imagine that - 21hrs to do 300km of upstream Mekong out of a total length of 4,200km! No wonder they call it the Mighty Mekong. The boat was reasonably well equipped to ensure our survival over the lengthy stretches. Free coffee, tea and bananas, plenty of room to stretch and even mats on the floor to sleep. I found a great spot at the beverage table down the back where I happily blogged Luang Prabang to successive cups of coffee!

 
Occasionally I would look up and admire the river and the adjoining banks and snap away at scenic moments. Our skipper worked hard turning his wheel constantly to navigate the many eddies and cross-drafts in the water. The colour of the Mekong was like liquid caramel, its colour coming from the silt collected from the banks and bottom as it swirls its way to the South China Sea. He was particularly skilled at aiming the boat in exactly the right directions when it rained so that no rain entered the open sides of the boat. We had three short downpours during the journey and the rest was sunny with clouds.

It is a peaceful journey and an opportunity to rest from the constant travel and heat. I snoozed for about 2hrs, finished my blog and even read half a book before we arrived at our homestay village of Don Cheang at 6pm, approx 15km downstream of Pak Beng (which you can find on any map of Laos). The village is close to the water, perched on a hill and built on a slope to prevent flooding in the wet season. There are no roads so it is completely isolated. We all had packed our day pack, leaving the main bags on the boat and climbed up several stone steps and mud to reach the top.

The "leader" of the village, Thong Wan, was there to welcome us and he led us to the underside area of his stilt home. We passed most of the village along the way taking photos and film in the fading light of day. Most homes were concrete brick bases with wooden siding and iron roofs. They were solid and well built. What I noticed immediately was the many children - they popped out to see us, some giggling, some shy. We would say "Sabai Le" (hello) in the local Khmu and sometimes get one back. At the leader's home we were divided into groups to stay at different village houses - two for eight guys and two for six girls. We all walked to our stilt homes and dropped off our day packs. The set up was exactly like my home stay in Lac in Vietnam. A flat mattress on the wooden floor, covered by a mozzie net suspended from the ceiling and windows.

By this time it was dark and we returned to the underside of the leader's home for dinner. What a tasty dinner. Cooked by the local women who were hosting us. Plenty of steamed rice, yellow chicken curry with potatoes and carrots, spicy pork with onion, stir fried morning glory (a type of green spinach) and a stir fried veggie medley. After dinner I held my "press conference" and "cultural exchange" with the leader, Thong Wan surrounded by his family and our group. I had prepared a list of questions on the boat which I gave to Sayan (our local Lao guide) to translate and show to Thong Wan while we ate. Sayan and I sat on either side of Thong and our leader, Stephen was cameraman. We then proceeded to film a total of 10 questions with our group acting as the live studio audience. We learned a great deal about Thong Wan and the village. Thong Wan is 40yrs old with 4 boys and 1 girl. Two of the boys are married with one child each. Thong Wan has been living in the village since 1975 and has been leader for 10yrs. This is his third term as leader and the village elects the leader every five years. Thong's responsibility as leader is to ensure that all the villagers have adequate shelter and food - if this is not the case then he rallies the villagers together to help out. He is also in charge of the care of common village property such as the primary school.

Thong Wan was instrumental in securing home stay for his village with G Adventures at the start of 2013. As a result of the extra income from this, the villagers decided to build a new primary school of concrete brick to replace the old wooden one. We were shown this work and the new school will be ready in another month in time for the new school year which begins in September. Thong Wan was very pleased with the benefits of tourism and his village has hosted some 200 visitors since the start of 2013. The village itself has 185 residents including 85 children - I was right - I mentioned to Stephen that I thought the kids would outnumber the adults.

The villagers grow mainly rice plus a number of different vegetables, catch fish and have plenty of pigs, chickens and ducks. Some have a few albino water buffalo which have a pinkish hide and spend most of their time close to the water's edge. During the wet season they also pick and eat mushrooms and bamboo. Thong Wan said that the best thing about Don Cheang village was its peaceful agricultural heritage and the fact that it was close to Pak Beng (1hr by boat) for supplies or emergencies or to sell their produce. He finished by saying that the Mekong was integral to their village as it is the only reliable means of

transport. There is a road, 30min walk away but it is often closed in the wet season due to mud slides. After the interviews came the "cultural exchange" (another idea I had pre-staged with Sayan) where Thong Wan invited me to taste "rice whiskey" from a clay plot and I reciprocated by pouring a glass of red wine for Thong Wan to try. What a blast this was. The rice whiskey is in fact rice wine and this one was better than the one I had sculled in Vietnam. It was less sweet and a bit more flavoursome.

The procedure is to sip from the full vat of whiskey from a bamboo straw and replace the liquid drunk with water from a plastic cup. Once the cup is depleted you have drunk one cup of whiskey! It is strictly one cup at a time per person for good luck. The water at the bottom of the clay pot has picked up fermented rice liquid at 20% alcohol. By the time the new water at the top reaches the bottom it will also pick up fermented liquid. This can go on for 2 to 5 weeks with just one clay pot of about five litres.

Amazing - this thing literally turns water into wine! Thong Wan liked the wine. I know because he insisted I stay after the my group had retired to finish the bottle! He had never tasted wine before. I suspected this, which is why I brought the bottle and insisted on the exchange. I had done this with my home stays in the Andes and in Vietnam with excellent results. Thong Wan described the wine as "bitter fruit juice". An excellent description from a first time wine drinker. The filming finished and the whole group partook of the whiskey, especially Sedd, who was turning 18 tomorrow - he must have sculled at least 3 cups! After our group retired at around 8pm, I stayed on with Thong

Wan, his family, Sayan and his step-brother Xa who was also a Lao-English guide with another company. We had a blast drinking rice wine, red wine and talking about life and Laos. Xa and Sayan explained to me that since the village installed solar cells and a generator and connected some TVs about 10 years ago, all the village women can now understand and speak some Thai because all the soap operas are from Thailand! What a laugh. The men of the village all prefer Thai music and Syan was even playing some on his work laptop whilst the others sang along. Like Vietnam, Lao has 44 different ethnic groups with "Lao" itself being the predominant (68%). Don Cheang is a Khmu village with a slightly different language, traditional clothing and food to the Lao.

Traditional dress is still worn at weddings but music and dance has largely disappeared. Thong Wan is happy that the Lao government has opened up the country to tourism and free trade. The villagers pay only a nominal land tax each year based on size and received some funds for the construction of their school and the establishment of the home stay. I could see that Thong Wan was very pleased with our visit and the guides were so impressed with the press conference and cultural exchange that they would drive it themselves for future home stays. Lucky for me there was a full moon out and I was able to find my own way back to my stilt home at around 10:30pm for a 5am rise tomorrow to farewell Laos and greet Thailand. Waking up was easy. Getting to sleep was tough. It was warm and humid and there were multiple insect sounds and one in particular was like a car horn! Not to mention my buddy Guenther next to me. So it was time to double the dose of blu-tac in my ears!!! It worked.

When we woke to the different pitches of four digital alarm clocks in the room and the sound of rain on the iron roof, it was too dark to visit the dunny downstairs so we set off slushing and slipping our way down to the boat in the mud. At around 5:30am we farewelled the village of Don Cheang and started our epic 11hr journey further upstream towards the Lao-Thai border. Most of us resumed our sleep and woke a second time to more rain and a breakfast of fried eggs, bread and marmalade. The rain soon stopped revealing a much narrower Mekong with jungle covered granite peaks on one side and rolling thicket on the other.

It was back to blogging, reading, chatting and even an episode of Larry David. Lunch was a chilli pork fried rice. The afternoon was particularly pleasant with a coolish breeze blowing over the bow of the boat. We arrived at the border Laos border town of Huay Xai at about 4:30pm. Two tuk-tuks took us to immigration and by 5:30pm we had stamped out of Laos, crossed the Mekong in a long boat, stamped into Thailand (with instant free visa - no wonder Thailand is the powerhouse of Indochina!) and tuk-tuked again to our hotel in the Thai border town of  Chiang Kong.

As soon as we checked in, everyone except me went for a shower in their rooms after 48 continuous hours on the Mekong - I went for a run. The typical wet season rain came down and by sun-down I was back. As a result of my run and the need to post the remaining Laos adventure, I was unable to join my group for dinner and sandwiched, beered and wined my wine to midnight...