we had joy, we had fun

There is not an error message on my Fujifilm Z33 Waterproof Digital Camera which says,

"Excuse me--I can't help but notice that you're about to jump off the back of a boat and you're still holding me. I'm quite flattered that you'd like to make use of my advertised underwater capabilities as you have done many times in the past, but I wanted to let you know that those have ceased to be, and it would be best if you left me on the boat.

Regards,
Your Camera."

As there is not such a message, I naively dove in, and without warning or goodbye, my camera captured some fishes



and died.

tossed upon stormy seas

I signed up for an island sightseeing-snorkeling tour thing while I was in Krabi. It's the low season, which means it's the stormy season, and if the weather was rough then the tour would have to be rescheduled. Luckily, it didn't rain that morning but the sea was wild. The first leg of the trip was to Bamboo Island, and normally takes about 45 minutes. On the choppy water it took us an hour of constant jolts as the front of the boat slammed back into the water after cresting each wave.

And you remember the story of Barf-o-rama, so I won't relate it here. I was not involved.

We made it to Bamboo Island alive!




This is the Viking Cave, so named because it has paintings inside of viking ships. It is closed to the public. :-(


And this is me on a boat!


Then we visited the lagoon on Phi Phi Lei.




And THEN I went to Phi Phi Don!




And there was snorkeling too, but that is a most tragical story which I will relate to you tomorrow.

Newspaper taxis appear on the shore

After two whole days on boats, I looked forward to some overland travel (no I didn't! I looked forward to someplace pretty where I could stay for a few days and *not* be on a bus or a boat or a train or any other seat for hours at a time.) I had to get to Thailand, either way.

The ferry from Huaey Sai, Laos to Chiang Khong, Thailand takes maybe five minutes. It just crosses the Mekong.



Thai immigration guy: why did you put my entry stamp on the right side of a brand new page halfway through my passport? It would have looked so clean if you had put it below my Lao entry stamp.

When I arrived in Chiang Khong, I took a tuk-tuk to the bus station to catch a bus to Chiang Rai.

THIS:


This is the beautiful, shiny, majestic public bus from Chiang Khong to Chiang Rai. It's near the most beautiful bus I've ever seen, I'd say.

I listened to some Elton John on the bus. "Your Song" reminded me of karaoke with Alan, and "I Guess That's Why They Call it the Blues" is kind of my favorite karaoke song (even though I've only sung it twice,) stolen from Annie.

But then.

"Tiny Dancer." It was perfect.

This could have happened,


but didn't.

Picture yourself in a boat on a river.

I do a lot of things so that I might look back one day and say, "I endured that." This is one of those things. Isn't it romantic to take the slow boat up the Mekong from Luang Prabang to Thailand? For awhile there, the water level was too low for the slow boats and they stopped the service altogether. I was quite pleased to learn that the boats were running when I wanted to leave Luang Prabang. I had heard horror stories about wooden benches with no cushions, so I was prepared to endure.

This was my first glimpse of boat 008, which would take me from Luang Prabang to Pakbeng.


But can you imagine my delight when I saw that instead of hard wooden benches, I would get to sit on a re-purposed bus seat?


This is a luxury riverboat if ever there was one. It looks like a shiny new camper or something. I can sit for 8 hours in a car seat. I've done that plenty over the last few weeks.

The water level is still quite low, and there are some nifty rock formations visible poking out of the water, like this:


And other, invisible ones scraping the bottom of the boat. The boat chugged along, though, slowing to a crawl as it navigated up rapids and taking me all the way to Pakbeng.


(I like to think that this is a family who decided to build their house on a barge, just because. And then they adopted a baby elephant for each of their children, and when they're not taking things up the bank of the Mekong, the elephants run and play on the barge like it's their own big backyard.)

It was not a eight hour ride. It might be eight hours downstream, or eight hours when the water level is higher. Today, it was not eight hours. Today, I was very ready to get off of the boat after ten hours.

Pakbeng is where the boat stops and you have to find a guesthouse. As usual, there are representatives from various guesthouses at the dock, or the top of the rocks you climb up when you get out of the boat.

There is nothing else in Pakbeng. There is no Internet. There are no karaoke bars. There are no bookshops. And the only way out in either direction is 10 hours of death. (Death is a boat, Guildenstern!)

The boat out of Pakbeng was this:


Here were the wooden benches with strict, tall backs.

Early in the ride most people abandoned the benches and built nests on the floor with backpacks, stolen cushions, and (thank you, Past Emily) travel pillows.



Maybe it was the different speeds that the water, land and clouds were moving, or maybe it was the fact that I had had my face buried in a book most of the day, or maybe it was that I had been dead for two whole days, but my eyes started playing tricks on me and the planks of the boat started moving. I didn't feel remotely nauseated, but I was pleased for my sanity to arrive in Huaey Sai, at sunset on the second day.


The ferry to Thailand wasn't running anymore, so I stayed the night and woke up bright and early to come back "home" to Thailand.

velvet darkness

Not more pictures of a river and mountains? Just one, to show a boat similar to the slow boat that I was on when I took the picture.

It's a very long, narrow thing with two rows of chairs facing forward. There were seven passengers on ours, which meant that the captain had to sit to one side so the boat didn't tilt too much.



It was an hour and a half ride, give or take, until I saw this:



Inside the cave are thousands of Buddha statues.



And...crap, I lied. More river and mountain. But this time it's from a cave!



Pak Ou has two caves, and the other one is up a long set of steps. The upper cave has this beautiful gate at the front



And a darkness at the back that rendered my camera useless.