035 On the way to Laos

"So you want take the night train Saturday? So sorry, it already full. No more ticket"

Wandering the backstreets of Bangkok, I walked into one of the hundreds of travel agencies here. At the door, an old man sat behind a rickety desk, his only purpose seemingly to rush to the door and hold it open for anyone who came close enough to the shopfront to be lured in. The walls of the place were lined with yellowed posters of tourist attractions and airline companies. Interestingly enough, all the other employees were women. One lady, her desk to the right, was attending to two Norwegian ladies who were planning a trip to a remote fishing village in the center of Thailand. The other lady, probably the owner of the place, shouted at me from across the room, beckoning me to the office chair in front of her. When I sat down, she kept on shouting at me and at her colleagues. Even though I sat just a meter or two away from her on the other side of her big desk filled with traveling brochures and hotel's business cards, she seemed to think there is a concrete wall between the two of us, and she has to use all her decibels to get her message through. Besides that she didn't appear dangerous, this was just her normal way of talking. I had told her I planned to take the night train to Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand. On Saturday, which was also tomorrow. 

"Everyone want to go to Chiang Mai tomorrow. If you go on Tuesday, maybe I can get you ticket", she yells at me.

"Ow, that's a pity, I really want to go tomorrow"

"You want hiking tour in Chiang Mai? And hotel? The hotel has train tickets"

"Wait, I thought you told me that the tickets were all gone"

"Yes, but the hotel book tickets, only for package. You get hotel, two nights in hotel, three days tracking in hills. You sleep in village, ride elephant!"

I see what is happening here, I am being played. There might still be tickets in the train station. Or there might not be. The train station, however, is far away. That's why I walked in here in the first place. And I need a hostel in Chiang Mai, I want to go trekking there, that's why I am going there anyway. But didn't my guidebook warn me not to buy a package in in Bangkok? Ow well, it can't hurt to hear what she offers me, I can always just say no at the end.

She continues to tell me about the nice hotel, the well organized trekking in the hill country, the bamboo rafting I would get to do, and the omnipresent elephant ride, which seems to be obligatorily included in every package I have seen advertised before and after this. Barraged by her sales pitch which she trows at me with turbojet power, slowly my determination starts to crumble, my Jericho wall of firm resolution brought down by her sales trumpets. And the price seems alright. I get the train ride in a second class sleeper, a night in a single bedroom in a hotel with swimming pool, a trek in the hills including the elephant ride, the rafting and all the meals, and another night in the hotel when we come back, for a grand total of 80 euros. After doing some quick mental arithmetic I decide that that's not so bad, and it saves me arranging all these things separately. Of course the agency is making money on this, but it can't be a whole lot, if they actually deliver.

And they did, I was lucky, they turned out to be dependable. Normally I never book these packages, because it is also a lot of fun to arrange things on the spot, but for now it was fine. The train ride, albeit air-co chilled to sub Arctic temperatures, was the best one up to now. The hotel was ok (they did have a swimming pool, but in the end I didn't take the time to swim in it). The walk was fantastic. The guides took us into a remote hill forest area. During the days, we hiked over small paths through dense jungle and across and through small streams, far away from civilization. During the nights we slept in small bamboo huts near villages without electricity. One night we stayed in huts right next to a waterfall, at the base of which we swam after the walk. The last day contained the elephants and rafts, as advertised. It was fun to sit on an elephant. In these parts the kings and maharajas used to ride elephants during parades and festivities. It must have looked majestic, but now I am sure it can't have been very comfortable. Nearly getting seasick on this ship of the jungle, we had to hold on tight when going downhill. The animals minders, however, seem not to mind. These Mahouts sit on the head of their big animal without anything to support them but experience.

After a a nice and quiet day in nearby Chiang Rai, I am getting really close to the Laos border now, and running out of Thailand. After one last Thai Noodle Soup in a sleepy border town, I take the ferry across the Mekong river, and book a hotel for the night, and the near-legendary slow boat for the next day. This boat takes me in two days to Luang Prabang, the old capital of Laos. We report at 9:00 o'clock the next morning at the pier from which the aptly named slow boat is supposed to depart at 9:30 but sits in the gently flowing river until 12:15. The rest of the day we (that is me and the other 74 passengers of this boat, plus the 75 in the second boat just ahead of us) float downstream. Walking would have been faster, but is more relaxing. In between getting acquainted with the fellow boatpeople, reading a bit, looking at the gorgeous landscape and taking an afternoon nap, the seven hours on the boat don't seem all that long. After disembarking in Pak Beng, the town in the middle, where the only thing that happens every day is the arrival of one or two boats packed with tourists, the scramble for rooms takes off. After a frantic game of Musical Chairs, some people end up sleeping on mattresses in guesthouse lobbies. I manage to secure a dingy dark room with a bathroom that I have to share with more than the other guests, but hey, it's only for one night.

Somewhere during the second day on this slow slow boat, you start realizing that one day would have been enough to practice sitting down and doing nothing. An then you arrive in Luang Prabang, a UNESCO protected beauty hemmed in by two rivers and filled with French colonial buildings which have decided unanimously to become guesthouses. A nice place to spend a few days.