We woke up bright and early this morning to have some breakfast and make sure that we got good seats on the boat. Thankfully, the guesthouse that we stayed at last night was very close to the dock, so Joey picked up some bananas while I had coffee and we walked down after we finished our quick breakfast. We got to the boat around 7:45am for a 9am scheduled departure, which was perfect because it seemed like everyone had the same idea. Once we chose good seats and got settled, the crowds of tourists began walking down to the dock soon after. We dropped our daypacks on our seat to call dibs and spent some time admiring the beautiful Mekong River in the morning when we spotted two elephants across the river!
The last few tourists got to the dock around 8:45am only to find that our guides had oversold tickets to locals. During the first leg of our trip, our boat was sold out…comfortable, but sold out. Turns out everyone wants to make a quick dollar, so they had some second leg tickets to locals not realizing (or maybe not caring) that wouldn’t be enough room for everyone. Like we said earlier, our boat was supposed to leave at around 9am, but because of the overbooking issue we didn’t leave until a second boat came around 10am to split the passengers. We left a bit later, but now the passengers were split between two boats, so it was less crowded than the first day.
It’s worth mentioning that it seemed like this wasn’t the first time this overbooking happened. The guides were offering the half dozen tourists that wouldn’t fit the opportunity to ride a speedboat the rest of the way (and one family happily accepted). I know what you’re thinking…sounds thrilling, but if you saw this death trap you might think otherwise. We actually read that there had been deaths on these things, so as they boarded, strapped it, and put on their helmets, we wished them luck. We actually didn’t see the speedboat family again, but the second boat ended up getting to Luang Prabang earlier than our boat, but had to wait an hour or so for ours because all of the bags had been stored away in ours and we had to drop some locals off at different points along the way (we probably stopped around 5 times in between). The second leg of the trip took about 7 hours after these stops.
The slowboat drops you off about 10km outside of Luang Prabang where a floating dock and another steep set of cement stairs leads you to an indoor ticketing booth. This booth acts as a taxi stand for tuk-tuks and seems to ensure either that tourists receive a fair price and/or that tuk-tuks don’t fight over passengers. Anyway, each tuk-tuk ticket cost 20,000 kip (about $2 USD) and takes about 10-15 minutes to get you into the city of Luang Prabang. We shared our tuk-tuk with two other pairs of travelers and were the second of three to be dropped off at our hotel. We’re staying at a cute little wooden hotel called the Pakhongthong Villa (Saynamkhan Ban Vatnong Hotel) for three nights!
After we settled in and had a nice hot shower, we decided to eat dinner at Khaiphaen. Khaiphaen is unique in that they don’t just serve amazing Laotian food; they also operate via a great cause. They were founded and remain a part of Friends International and the TREE Alliance, which stands for Training Restaurants for Employment and Entrepreneurship. They actually have a few different restaurants across Southeast Asia, but this was our first experience. Their mission is “address the needs of street children and young people in Laos” through the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare. So we did not only enjoy amazing food, but also supported an amazing social business program!
Tomorrow we plan to have a nice little breakfast at our hotel and begin exploring this beautiful UNESCO World Heritage city, so stay posted!