There is a bus that goes from Houay Xai to Luang Prabang in about 4 hours and costs $10 but that's not where you will find us or any other authentic-experience-seaking backpacker. No, instead, we chose to catch the slow boat down the Mighty Mekong which takes two full days with an overnight stop in a single dirt lane town, costs double the price and is solely furnished with narrow wooden benches which reminded me of the classroom in "little house in the prairie". The Lonely Planet describes it as a "once-in-a-lifetime" experience and I guess they mean it's really great but I also think that you won't catch me on that boat again anytime soon.
As we set off, about 40 min. after schedule, the spirits are high and the boat is quite full with some people opting for the floor rather than the pews and congregating in groups, chatting about the night before or the trip to come.
The Mekong is pretty quiet and we hardly pass a few people fishing in the river. Their villages are hidden in the hills surrounding and the only traces of people living there are some bamboo fishing lines sticking out of the rocks and some herds of beige and grey water buffalos, enjoying a refreshing swim, in their perfectly matched surroundings of light coloured sand and dark grey rocks.
All the hills around us are ablaze and smoking. It is by now a pretty familiar landscape since we have reached the north of Thailand. Local farmers burn off everything on the hills to use for dry rice culture and other crops. Some hills are so steep and the quantity of burnt land is so incredible that it just seems totally wasteful and even dangerous. In the dry season, we have barely seen a drop of rain but in the wet season, these hills would just turn into avalanches of mud. The smoke in the air also makes photography quite a challenge, covering everything up with a thick blanket of dullness. Even the sun looks like a really orange moon.
The overnight stop is quick and fine. In the morning, we load ourselves up with bananas, cookies and some filled baguette sandwiches for lunch. The baguettes in Laos are one of the best things the French could ever leave behind. The trip goes very much the same, except the boat is about half the size and everything in it seems to have shrunk in proportion. Still, we know the drill and we all settle down while the seconds tick away slowly. Nothing much happens, the landscape just keeps on going by, a few fishermen, farmers and some water buffalos. It strikes us that this landscape and its inhabitants must have barely changed since the French were exploring the Mekong a hundred years ago. Even the burning hills were mentionned then.
It's true that this trip wasn't quite what I expected. With a mixture of images from the boat to Battambang of leaping laughing children and floating villages, I had assumed that the Mekong would be a bustling artery of markets and fishing nets. It wasn't. It was really quiet and isolated. A world where the passage of time seems to have little impact and once again, I got this now familiar feeling in South East Asia of not only travelling through space but also through time. Time immemorial.
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