010107 Huay Xai to Chiang Khong

Hopelessly lost cat finally found its way back to Thaveesinh Hotel at ~10AM, long after its companions from the Pak Beng-Huay Xai boat had checked out & left for Chiang Khong.

Based on reports from other travellers it was expecting to have to pay an 'overtime fee' for crossing the border on a public holiday, but the two Lao immigration officers on duty just waved the cat through after collecting the immigration departure card & adding their bit of red ink to its passport. Making its way down the slope to the Mekong, no-idea-who called out to the cat & told it to hurry up & jump into a boat with 2 guys that was already pulling out to cross the river. In the middle of the Mekong...

Mr Passenger 1: yiam Thai leu yiam Lao? (visit Thailand or visit Laos?)
Cat: ??
*scratch head* isn't this boat going to Thailand...?
Cat: yiam Lao laew bpai yiam Thai (visit Laos already go visit Thailand)
Mr Passengers 1 & 2: ?!
Mr Passengers 1: khon Thai leu khon Lao? (Thai person or Lao person?)
Cat explains that it is from Singkapor...

Turns out that Mr Passengers 1 & 2 were trying to figure out if it was a Thai visiting Laos or a Lao visiting Thailand - so why on earth was it saying that it's visiting BOTH? :P

Looking back at Huay Xai with the bell & drum tower of Wat Chom Khao among the trees:




Only at this point did the cat realise that there were sheltered boats - both times it had crossed on unsheltered ones. Mr Passengers 1 & 2 headed off to start another day of work operating the cross-river vehicle ferry, while the cat made its way to the Thai immigration:





20 baht + 1 chatty tuktuk driver + 1 more round of explaining that it isn't a Siamese cat (my ears, face & paws might be tanned from the sun but my tail is black not brown!) later, the cat was dropped off at a roadside fruit stall in Chiang Khong market. Madam Fruit Seller asked the cat where it was going & then yelled out no-idea-what to no-idea-who - apparently the bus to Chiangrai was about to leave & she was getting the driver to hang on so that the cat could jump on board through the back door - just like how it had scrambled onto the bus to Chiang Khong a fortnight earlier...& so within 20 minutes flat of stepping back on Thai soil the cat was waving goodbye to Chiang Khong:



1 police road block + 2 seat changes (to make way for monks) later the cat was back in Chiangrai city to meet the others at Baan Bua Guesthouse...

010107 Wat Chom Khao - 07 view

Singha on guard duty at the top of the stairs:



Before:



After:



They never knew what hit them.

One could literally roll all the way down the stairs from Wat Chom Khao & the slope past the Lao immigration & splash into the Mekong:



Thai immigration at Chiang Khong across the Mekong:



Yellow + red shelter marks the cross-river boat waiting point, vehicle ferry to the left. Watching boatloads of backpackers coming ashore at Huay Xai - with their huge numbers, bandannas, sunburnt skin from time spent baking on the islands & beaches of Thailand, & big fat 70++L backpacks, the scene pretty much resembles a roasted Ninja Turtle version of D-day at Normandy.

181206 Chiang Khong - Huay Xai

Today's route:



Had planned a clockwise loop around north Lao:

• everyone else seems to take the counterclockwise direction
  
• easier to find boats heading downriver along the Nam Ou
  
• leave Luang Prabang (& shopping) for the last
  
• clear the infamous highway (HWY) 3 right at the start, so that all other roads in Lao would seem great by comparison =P
  
• boats heading upriver along the Mekong are far emptier as most tourists travel downriver (which means downriver boats get all the touts, overcharging & overcrowding)

Chiang Khong immigration at the north end of town looks more like a ticket office - no gates, no fences, no barbed wire...just a short building that anyone can walk right past & hop on a boat to Lao (or even China) or on a bus to anywhere in Thailand. No one would realise till much later (if at all), at some river checkpoint or police roadblock. This hard-to-police section of the Mekong has become the latest escape route for North Koreans fleeing across China & north Lao into Thailand in order to seek UNHCR help & repatriation to South Korea.

immigration officer: 5 baht departure tax
cat hands him a 5 baht coin
immigration officer: no, you can go, your friend pay for you
*look right look left* Thank you but what friend...?!

Freakish...Mr. Immigration Officer has a 'third eye' that can see 'people' that are invisible to the cat's eyes...




Walked down the slope to the riverbank, past a pile of backpacks with Air Asia baggage tags marked CEI & a girl wearing a NTU Hall ? windbreaker, & was directed to an empty boat after handing over 20 baht.



Shan-style drum tower of Wat Chom Khao Manirat in Huay Xai on opposite bank:




& then backpacks, windbreaker & their owners got on....

cat: are you from Singapore? from NTU?
NTU grads: yar how do you know? (said something about having graduated & started working)
cat: saw one of you wearing an NTU hall windbreaker.
NTU grads: are you from Thailand? how do you know about NTU?
cat: ?! am from Singapore too.
NTU grads: ?!! are you going to Laos to work?
cat: ?!!! am on holiday.
NTU grads: alone?
cat: yar. where are you heading to?
NTU grads: ?!!!! (said they were taking boat to Luang Prabang, & asked about the cat's plans)
cat: taking bus inland to Luang Namtha.
NTU grads: ?!!!!!

Huay Xai immigration:



30-day visa-free entry for khon singkarpor =) The little booth (with open window) on the left is a branch of the Lao Development Bank, where tourists can load up on thick rubberband-bound stacks of kip. Nearest ATM that can accept foreign cards is a long way off in Vientiane, & there is only one, which means it can run out of kip. (update: Luang Prabang & Vang Vieng reported to have new international ATMs that accept cards with Maestro logo)

Wonder why they bothered to paint the words 'BY AIR':



Huay Xai has no airport =P
(correction: Huay Xai has flights to Vientiane & Luang Prabang served by this type of plane, but few foreigners dare risk Lao Airlines' safety & maintenance record; before ~2001 Lao had no radar system for air traffic control & relied on Thailand, Vietnam, radio communication, daylight & good eyesight & visibility!)

181206 morning in Chiang Khong

View of Huay Xai across the Mekong from Ban Tammila Guesthouse:



Sai Klang Road (sounds too much like 'sai kang' to the Hokkien-literate =P), Chiang Khong's main street, was empty save for the odd tuktuk or motorbike piled with kids heading for school:



Beautiful (Tai Lue style?) house at corner of main street & soi 2:



Wat Phra Kaew, decorated with Tai Lue 'banners', โคมหูกระต่าย khom1 hu2 kra3 tai3 (rabbit ear lanterns) & Tai Lue style lions that look more like mane-less dragon-headed dogs:



Someone's garden:



Breakfast at a tiny porridge place just north of soi 1, somewhere opposite the internet cafe closest to Ban Tammila:



Wonderful thick pork porridge with hard boiled egg + century egg + bowlful of nice crispy stuff to mix with the porridge - popular with locals, many whom stopped by on motorbikes to place large takeaway orders of several packets.

cat: เท่าไหร่จ้าว thao4 rai3 jao4?
owner: ซาวบาท sao1 baht3

Fishing out a green 20 baht note, the cat realised that it had 'unconsciously' understood the Northern Thai dialect & Lao word for 'twenty'.

The only Lao the cat knew was what it managed to remember from flipping through pages 292-7 of Lonely Planet Laos (2005 edition). Was banking on broken Thai + Chinese + sign language & pointing + pictionary-style drawings to get through the next 2 weeks...but now there was a small glimmer of hope for linguistic survival =)

171206 Chiangrai - Chiang Khong

There are two Chiangrai-Chiang Khong bus services, both with the same 2.5 hour travel time, fare & hourly departures, but slightly different routes. The one via Phaya Mengrai alternates with the one via Wiang Chai such that a Chiang Khong-bound bus departs Chiangrai every half hour (Chiangrai bus timetable).

The 15:30PM Chiang Khong bus pulled out just as the cat got off the bus from Chiangmai...but a quick thinking Chiangrai bus station staff saw the cat with a backpack & asked it for its destination. The next thing the cat knew it was running after the guy through the crowd to the opposite end of the bus station...where he stood in the middle of the road & stopped the Chiang Khong bus on its way out of the station - so sweet! Thanks to him the cat would reach Chiang Khong before sundown & not have to hunt for its guesthouse in the dark - how's that for service? =)

& so the cat tumbled through the back door onto the wooden-floored bus & found itself in the company of a few locals, a German tourist, 2 papa smurfs (red beret Thai soldiers) from the Chiangmai bus (how they got on before the cat is a mystery) & a monk. Back to the familiar pay-the-conductor-on-board system of bus travel with no computer systems nor assigned seating, & a sophisticated face recognition system powered by the bus conductor's brain to keep track of how much each passenger has paid (& where they have requested to alight at) instead of tickets.

The road between Phaya Mengrai & Chiang Khong was paved but super potholed. Drove through an endless smoky expanse of burning post-harvest rice fields. Little did the cat know that this would be the last of any straight road & flat terrain it would see for the rest of the year....

The ride terminated at the market at the southern end of town, where a bunch of waiting tuktuks quickly disappeared with locals from the bus. Mr German & the cat shared the last tuktuk (20 baht per person anywhere in Chiang Khong, 10 baht for short hops) & a short chat. The cat was dropped off at soi 1 leading to Ban Tammila Guesthouse as darkness fell, while Mr German continued north to check out Bamboo Riverside Guesthouse.

Ban Tammila is right by the Mekong river, 350 baht per double room without river view in peak season:



Huay Xai & the Mekong are 'invisible' in the (almost) pitch black darkness, so no point paying for the view if just overnighting. The restaurant area overlooks the river anyway. Not the cheapest option in town, but one that could be booked in advance, so that the cat can stick to its policy of having its first night accommodation of any trip settled before arrival, when it is still in its blur work-to-holiday transition state.



Lousy thing about travelling solo - having to pay for double/twin rooms as single rooms are unheard of in most guesthouses. Good thing - easier to find alternative accomodation (floor space in local family's hut or boat or fellow traveller's room) if stranded, & to squeeze onto vehicles that are full. The otherwise spotless bathroom had a full colony of ants marching across one end, but not much of a problem as they kept to one side & the cat kept to the other - peace =)

Ban Tammila is also the place where you can buy the 'Siam hammock' invented by the owner.

Taking a sniff of the air the cat ended up at a little restaurant along the main road. Typical family-run living room establishment that the cat usually eats at in Thailand...adults cook the 25 baht meals either at the front by the road, or in a kitchen in the back, customers dine at tables in the living room surrounded by family photos & pictures of highly revered monks & members of the Thai royal family, while watching EPL or King's Cup soccer matches on TV together with kids doing homework in between serving food, & at the end of the day the family rolls down the shutters & retires to their bedrooms upstairs.

end of day 1 (171206):
noodle soup/pho/feu/khaaw soi eaten to date = 01 bowl