After a brief couple of days in Bangkok (details in a later post), we took yet another night bus up to the city of Chiang Khong in the north of Thailand. Located just across the Mekong River from Laos, it is a common destination for tourists to catch a river cruise to Laos. We weren’t originally planning to go to Laos but we were about to overstay our Thai visa, so we figured we might as well make our visa run fun!

We spent one day in Chiang Khong, which was plenty. It’s a cute little town – but little being the key word. We ate at the same restaurant for lunch and dinner, got some passport photos taken for our Lao visas, and that’s about it. There’s probably more to see there but we weren’t sure what!

The River Cruise – The Way Down

There are a few different options for cruising down the Mekong from Chiang Khong to Luang Prabang, Laos. You can take a 2-day private tour company, a public 2-day “slow boat” option, or a 1-day “fast boat” option. Pretty much everything we read said the fast boat was dangerous and horrible, so we decided to splurge a little and take a tour rather than the crowded public boat.

Our tour company was Nagi of Mekong, who we found because John had taken this exact boat trip 9 years ago! The boat is an incredibly long wooden boat equipped with benches, tables, bathrooms, and a kitchen. It can accommodate ~40 people, but on our ride down there were only 10 of us so we had lots of space. Our tour guides name was Xayphone who does this trip back and forth along the river multiple times a week, sometimes having to take a night bus in between to restart from the top.

Our first day we stopped at a small village along the river and got to walk around. A lady was making rice whisky in her yard and let us try some. And yikes was it strong – one sip will leave you red in the face! This particular village can be accessed by motorbike in addition to boat, and we saw someone ride by on a motorbike with an IV hooked up to them – quite the site to see! Apparently they have to travel pretty far to get to a clinic so things like that are not uncommon. I asked Xayphone if they pay the villages to let us visit and he said the tour company typically pays them in children’s books and toys.

The first night we stayed in the town of Pak Beng, a little town that fills with tourists every night from all the slow boat tours on the river. Xayphone took us to the local market and explained what some of the different vegetables were. There was a little girl there that was really taken by me and John and held our hands and tried to follow us outside of the market. She was very cute! After a delicious meal at an Indian restaurant (when in Laos?) we ended the night at Happy Bar, the bar they really push all of the tourists to. We admit we did leave there happy!

We got up early the second day to get back on our boat and continue down the river. The boat ride was incredibly relaxing and peaceful, both John and I took naps on the day beds each day. We saw hundreds of water buffalo and goats, spent lots of time reading and getting to know the other people on the boat. Our first stop on day two was at a village that specializes in textiles. The village itself was really cool and seemed a lot bigger than the first, but pretty much all of the residents were lined along the road trying to sell us their products, and those situations always make us feel a bit awkward. They were beautiful though, and I bought a nice bracelet while some other people in our group bought some shawls.

Our last stop was at a temple cave along the river full of Buddhist statues. There was a vendor there selling birds in tiny cages which to us seemed really random and sad to trap the birds like that. At a different temple we eventually saw someone buy one and then set the birds free – so we think it’s a symbolic sort of ritual. This was our last stop before our destination of Luang Prabang, and we were actually a little sad to say goodbye to our boat we spent ~10 hours on each day.

Luang Prabang, Laos

Situated in central Laos, Luang Prabang is one of the most visited cities in Laos. We decided to spend two nights there before heading back to Thailand to give ourselves a chance to explore. We found a cheap hotel across the river from the main part of town, but we heard there was a cool bamboo bridge that you can cross to get to the other side no problem. However after much searching, we learned the bridge had been taken down (which apparently they do every year and rebuild after the wet season). But luckily there was a restaurant that ran a shuttle boat back and forth across the river for $0.20 so we used that service several times.

The Luang Prabang night market is famous for how expansive it is. There were so many cool handmade items that we wanted but we had no way to transport back! It ends at a very large food stall area where we got dinner. It was really busy so we shared a table with a couple girls, and actually ended up eating a lot of their food for them because they said it was too spicy. We both tried it and literally could not detect any spice – so I think you could say our spice tolerance has reached a new level!

On our one full day we visited the famous Kuang Si Waterfall. It has so many different levels it was really incredible. John swam in several of the pools, but even in the extreme heat the water was a bit too cold for me. When we got back to town we climbed up to the Phousi Hill Temple at the highest point in Luang Prabang. Apparently putting temples on the top of hills is a popular thing to do! Typically the view from the top would be pretty spectacular, but the sky was very smokey due to farmers burning off their crops in the area. This smoke would end up haunting us for the next several weeks, but at this point we just found it a little inconvenient for the view!

The River Cruise – The Way Up

Since we had to get back to the north of Thailand for our upcoming Workaway, we decided to take the same river cruise company right back up to Chiang Khong! This actually worked out really well because the company gave us a discount for booking with them both ways, plus a “loyalty” discount since John had taken a trip with them before. And on top of that our tour guide on the way back up was Xayphone again, so we got to spend a lot more time with him.

This time there was actually only four of us on this giant boat, us and a couple from the Netherlands. We were also on a different boat – which made me realize I had a strange attachment to the other boat – because everything was slightly different! Apparently the way it works is a family owns the boat, one of them is the driver, one of them is the cook, and sometimes their children come along to help. So each boat is set up a little differently depending on how the family builds it/keeps it up.

We stopped at the same Buddhist cave as the way down, but visited a different villages. The first village we visited had a bunch of kids that were so excited to follow us around, and at one point John and I each had a child holding each of our hands and walking us around. Apparently we have a way with kids in Laos!

We stayed in Pak Beng again on the way up, but this time since we were better friends with Xayphone he invited us out to dinner. He took us to a spot where clearly more locals ate and ordered us some fish caught locally prepared three different ways. John and him also took shots of local whisky that had snakes, scorpions, and who knows what soaking in them. I passed on that one.

At the village we stopped at on day 2, Xayphone told us that he hadn’t visited this village since before Covid. And when we got there we could tell it was definitely a different vibe – pretty much the entire town came out to look at us (they hadn’t had visitors in like 3 years) and the kids were really shy and maybe a little scared of us. We felt a bit more intrusive at this one, but Xayphone assured us that the villages have a choice to let us visit and the benefit they get from the company outweighs the 10 min intrusion of visitors walking through their town. We hope that’s true! This village had running water and some solar panels that an organization working with the town had recently installed. Apparently most villages along this part of the Mekong have electricity, but running water is a bit more rare.

We decided to stay on the Laos side of the border in the town of Huay Xai instead of heading back over to Thailand and spending another night in Chiang Khong. We met up with Xayphone for dinner and he took us to a really local hot pot restaurant on the river. He actually has a sister that lives in the San Juan Islands, so we’re hoping he’ll come visit someday and we’ll get to see him again!

The Food

We didn’t spend enough time in Laos to get a strong impression of Laotian food, but there were a couple stand outs –

• Beer Lao – the most common beer in Laos, and actually surprisingly good. Significantly better than Thai beer in our opinion
• Luang Prabang Sausage – no idea what’s in it (probably for the best) but it’s spicy and really good. We went back for seconds
• Hotpot – not exclusive to Laos but the only time we had it on this trip. Xayphone lead the way and it was delicious!

We wish we had more time to spend in Laos, but we committed to a workaway in the north of Thailand and were on a tight schedule. We’ll definitely be back!

Christine