{"id":2616,"date":"2026-03-01T02:40:04","date_gmt":"2026-03-01T02:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aerowalsh.com\/cr\/?p=2616"},"modified":"2026-03-01T02:43:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-01T02:43:23","slug":"sat-28th-feb-pak-beng-to-luang-prabang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/?p=2616","title":{"rendered":"Sat 28th Feb – Pak Beng to Luang Prabang"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

CR: A day similar to yesterday. Cruise time passes quickly. We read, watch the view, have lunch, work on the prior day’s blog, have a little excursion ashore and then arrive at Luang Prabang around 5pm. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

DW: We end our trip at Luang Prabang at twilight. More details to follow on Luang Prabang in tomorrow’s blog. We have a few days there now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
DW: In the morning from our French plantation style hotel a mist settles on the Mekong. It feels like the cut scene from Apocalypse Now where Captain Willard stumbles across a similar location. That reminds me. I better sharpen my machete.
CR: All the vegetables being grown below are single season crops. When wet season comes that whole area will be inundated.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
CR: There are lots of free roaming cows and water buffalo on the banks of the Mekong. They obviously belong to someone but how does the farmer know where to find them? This is an astute question because it turns out it is not yet a solved problem. Farmers know which cattle are theirs by brands and cuts made in the animal… But some brands and cuts follow a similar pattern to others and it is not uncommon to have a dispute over who owns what. Our guide says this happened to his uncle and to resolve the argument they slaughtered the animal and cut it in half, one half for each person who claimed to own the cow.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
DW: Most villages along the banks are of this character. Maybe 20-50 houses, all of a similar build. Lots of little kids, but no teenagers as they are off to the cities for schooling. As mentioned in an earlier post, the complete absence of a road network makes a lot of these only really accessible over the river and they to just remain self sufficient to a large extent.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
DW: Most of the river is covered in forests on both sides. You get the feeling that this is due to inaccessiblility more than anything. Every now and then you see hills in varying stages of deforestation (as seen here) or that have been planted over with some crop (normally rubber or bananas). Normally the deforestation is only over part of the hill. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
DW: The interior of our boat from the front looking aft. The reclining lounges are in front, then the little tables with smaller lounges where we spend most of our time, then the bar\/food area.
CR: Reclining lounges are in hot demand. The oldies nab them the first day and don’t leave. We get a go the next morning but the moment we leave to get lunch the oldies pounce. Never has an old person moved with such vitality as when they must fight for a recliner.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
DW: The new “high speed” (up to 40kph faster than old one!) rail from Yunnan in South China to the capital of Laos, Vientiane. This is part of ongoing Chinese investment in the region under Belt and Road Initiatives.
CR: There is a general belief that Laos will soon be subsumed by China, both in Laos and in Thailand. <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
DW: As we head further south we see a bit more evidence of burning getting started. You chop down all the big trees, presumably to dry them out, then burn and let it do its thing.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
DW: The other large scale Chinese investment is damming of the Mekong for hydroelectric power. We passed another one yesterday at an earlier stage of development and this one today making more progress.
CR: For the first 32 years the power generated will go only to China – this is the ‘payback period’.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
CR: I like the tour guide of our boat. Yesterday we had a shore excursion to a small village of 98 families. It felt very remote. The tour guide is from a similar village and was explaining how it’s expected that you marry at 15 because you’re done with school at 12 and don’t have much else to get on with. There’s a lot of slaughtering of animals as celebration. The village we visit is incomprehensibly basic and I feel guilty that I am relieved to leave it after an hour. Today’s excursions are less socially confronting. We visit a temple in a cave first.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
CR: And then next we go to a whisky distillery. Distillary is a bit of a euphemism. It’s a little more rustic than the word suggests.
DW: The infographic with an inspection was sufficient to understand the process of creating happy water. I might be kicking one of these off in my backyard soon.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
CR: I get some learning done before we dock at Luang Prabang. Luang Prabang used to be the capital of Laos back in ye old times before it was decided Vientiane would be more strategically appropriate. A little known fact about Laos: for five months the Japanese controlled the country, after the French. This ended abruptly with the unconditional Japanese surrender finishing WW2.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
CR: Luang Prabang this evening is very busy and loud. We go for a little walk and have dinner in town. We check out the night markets where I am convinced Declan gets the local price for a snack because he orders in Laotian (we’ve been practicing – all the activities we do have local Laotian guides so they teach us bits and pieces). I am well impressed. Otherwise not much to report from the night markets. We are a bit night-marketed-out. Bed time follows soon after.
DW: The food here is obviously targeting the tourist money. Luang Prabang is a tourist town and the food is of a higher calibre and is often trying to be cool in an inner city sort of way. It\u2019s nice, but a culture shock from Huayxai.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slow.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2667,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thailand-laos-cambodia-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2616"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2681,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2616\/revisions\/2681"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}