Boat Trip up the Mekong

After a reasonably long lie, we headed to breakfast before meeting with our guide at 9.30am. Breakfast was good, especially the freshly made to order eggs; my scrambled eggs were delicious!

At 9.30am, we met our guide at the hotel entrance. He told us to take a jacket as the boat trip up the Mekong would be cold, shame I didn’t bring one! We set off to the banks of the river to board the Nava Mekong, a beautiful river boat which would take us and 20 or so more tourists up to the Pak Ou Caves. We were sitting next to a friendly couple from the midlands and chatted some of the way to our first stop, the whisky village! We got to sample 3 types of whisky, all made from rice; two were 15% and the other 50%, guess which we bought? There were lots of other whiskies with scorpions, snakes and random things in them...no thanks! The village also sold jewellery and scarfs, all handmade, with the proceeds going directly to the village. Iain got a scarf which took 2 weeks to make for about £13. There were also people cutting down bamboo; it is used for lots of things but they are trying to introduce it instead of plastic for straws and drinking containers.












After 30 minutes wandering around the village, we got back on the boat and headed towards the caves; a popular destination for pilgrims. There are 2 caves, carved out of the limestone cliffs; one is a short flight of steps, the other a steep 10 minute climb up approximately 200 steps! It was well worth it as the caves contain thousands of wooden and gold lacquered Buddha statues ranging in size; although the termites have been destroying the wooden statues! 





After an hour, we got back on the boat and were served lunch; beer, sausage with river weed and tomato chutney, chicken and coconut soup, Laos pork salad, steamed Mekong fish, vegetable stir fry and fresh fruit, in that order! During lunch, we headed back downstream before driving back to the hotel. It was only 2.30pm so I decided to have a Lao traditional massage; well wasn’t that an experience. I had to change into a set of, what can only be described as overalls! The masseuse was a very slight woman, but damn she was strong. The massage was done through the overalls and consisted of her kneeling on my back until it cracked and basically prodding and manipulating my body into weird positions! It was amazing!

It was 4pm when I finished, and the beginning of happy hour! It was now 27 degrees so we ordered a couple of drinks and decided to sit by the pool..



We also learned the words for “thank you” and “thank you very much” today; khop jai and khop jai lai lai. 

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