Category: 2023-01 Hanoi to Singapore

We’ve met up with the mighty Mekong River quite a few times over the last few weeks – first in the huge Mekong Delta region of Southern Vietnam, then again in Phnom Penh (Cambodia), Nong Khai (Thailand), Vientiane (Laos), and finally in Luang Prabang. Now, it was time to get properly acquainted as we were to spend two days sailing upriver on the ‘slow boat’ to Thailand.

I should probably confess that our journey wasn’t to be on the original slow boat, the public ferry that makes its way up and down river daily, stopping at local settlements on the way. We’d read that this can be a great experience but quite cramped, which is fine for a few hours but maybe less so for 10 or more hours a day. We decided that if we were going to spend two days on the water, where the journey was the destination, we should make the most of it. All this to say that we talked ourselves into a private slow boat, complete with lovely lunches, day beds (my favourite!) and a couple of interesting stops en route. We already felt a bit guilty about our uncharacteristically extravagent decision but even more so when we boarded and found that we were two of only five guests on board (the boat had capacity for 30) – not particularly good for our carbon credentials!

We set sail from lovely Luang Prabang just before dawn, and before long the sun peeked over the hills next to the riverbank.

We spent the next few hours gazing out of the window at the landscape and eating our second breakfast (in true Vicar of Dibley style, we didn’t like to tell the lovely family who were looking after us that we’d already eaten), before making a brief stop at the Pak Ou Caves. These caves are full of Buddha images small and large, and are a favourite annual pilgrimage site for Laotians, who bring their Buddha images from home to pray with them.

In exchange for a donation, I picked up a Lao version of the omijuki we’d selected in Sapporo to tell us our fortunes at New Year, and once we were back on the boat, I asked our guide to help us translate it (Google Translate having been even less help than in Japan). He said that a lot of it was quite abstract so I imagine he had to exercise some artistic licence in interpreting it, but that, “If you have a sales business, it is good for your future,” [well I don’t, but noted] and that, “Your love will love you much more in the future” [so maybe the tide will turn and Thomas 🐈 will prefer me to Oli one day!]. It all sounded very promising, although I do wonder what he wasn’t telling me, as there was a bit more written than that…

Because of the meanders in the Mekong’s route through Laos, we passed twice under bridges that carry the Lao-China Railway up towards China. As far as we know, there aren’t any trains running along this route at the moment (we’ll have to come back one day) but it was still incredible to see the sheer amount of concrete supporting this huge infrastructure project.

It looked so out of place on the banks of the Mekong, where we had drifted past little more than small settlements, herds of buffalo and cows, bamboo fishing rods, and local people out panning for gold. In fact, the very largest settlement we saw was the town of Pak Beng, where we arrived around sunset of our first day to spend the night. This was the biggest town for some distance, but that’s not saying much – below is the quiet main street.

After a night spent in our simple (but perfectly adequate) £10 guesthouse (our attempt to balance the books after splashing out on the private boat!) we headed back down to the jetty for another pre-dawn start. Soon after, we made a stop at a riverside village for a quick wander.

We weren’t quite sure how we felt about this, to be honest. Although I love to see how other people live (one of the great joys of travel), I do think there’s a fine line between this and flat-out voyeurism. And this was no slick, rehearsed, inauthentic tour-group stop, but a tiny, remote and obviously quite deprived village. We understood from our guide that there is a financial agreement with the Village Chief so that the local people benefitted from our visit and that the village is changed regularly so that these benefits are distributed in the region, but I’m still not totally convinced that our presence was really welcome or helpful. So, whilst another member of our small group was photographing the children (which didn’t feel quite right), we focused on making friends with the piglets who were roaming around freely.

After an absolutely spectacular buffet lunch (the family on whose boat we were travelling looked after us SO well), the remainder of our second day was spent much as the first. We gazed out of the window at life on the banks of the Mekong, napped on daybeds, listened to podcasts (my current picks are Table Manners, Desert Island Discs and More or Less, in case you’re wondering – please send more recommendations my way!), caught up on this blog, and made some onward travel plans. It was an incredibly peaceful way to travel.

Around 4pm, we passed under the Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge IV, which marks the western border crossing between the two countries, and docked on the Lao side of the river in the small town of Huay Xai. Here, we watched the sun set over the Mekong one last time, before crossing the border to begin our journey south through Thailand the following day.

Last week, we spent the morning at a farm just outside Luang Prabang to take part in the intriguingly-named ‘Rice Experience’, where we would learn more about what it takes to produce one of the world’s most important staple foods^†. We’d read beforehand that children loved it, and true to form, I was extremely excited about splashing around in some mud and meeting the water buffalo.

Step 1: Select the grains

Our guide Neuk showed us how to select the most suitable grain for planting by putting a freshly-laid egg into a bowl of water and showing us that it sank. Next, he added lots of salt (to increase the density of the water) until the egg began to float, then removed the egg and added handfuls of rice. The rice grains that sank in the salty water were suitable for planting, as their weight suggested that they were healthy grains and not damaged or empty husks.

Typically, 35 kg of grain is required to plant a hectare of rice, so it is well worth selecting the grains that have the best possible chance of producing a good crop. Ultimately, this will yield around 1,500 kg of rice (roughly a 40-fold increase!).

Step 2: Germinate the seed

Now it was time for us to get involved. Neuk casually stepped barefoot down from the path into the rice paddy and invited us to follow him. He made it look very easy to walk around but it really wasn’t – somewhere between wading in soup and ice skating! Thankfully at this point he hadn’t mentioned the snakes, spiders and rats who also live in the rice paddies (and who end up on locals’ BBQs for dinner if they are harming the crop). For some reason it hadn’t crossed my mind that we might be sharing the area with any friends, so I happily got stuck in.

Neuk gathered some mud together to make a mini-mountain that protruded above the water level, and we sprinkled the grain on here.

He splashed the grain with water and explained that it would take between three and four days to germinate. We didn’t have this long to wait, so in a perfect Blue Peter moment, he produced some seedlings he had prepared earlier that we could use for the next steps in the process.

Step 3: Plough the rice paddy

I was quite surprised to find that a flooded rice paddy needed ploughing, but apparently it does and this happens in several stages: first, the earth is loosened and turned over so that any weeds are buried, and then a rake-like plough (which probably has a special name…) is used to even out the ground ready for planting. For this job, we met Susan, a gentle giant of a water buffalo who lived on the farm with her partner Bentley and her three-month old baby. We thought Susan was an excellent name for a water buffalo, although the little we know about farming from friends tells me that it is not the done thing to name your cattle, so she had almost certainly been named for our benefit!

We were taught the Lao commands to ask Susan to start and stop, and I had a go at driving the plough. Even though Susan was doing all the hard work, it still took my full attention to keep up with her while sloshing through the knee-deep mud. I did my best with the commands, but Susan made it very clear that she didn’t understand my accent.

Step 4: Plant out

Now that the paddy was ready for planting, we were shown how to stand in a row facing the side of the paddy, divide our seedlings and pop them into the soil, then take a step backwards and repeat. It was not at all easy to walk backwards through the thick mud without falling! By this point, I had wiped my muddy hands all over my shorts so was in a complete mess, but I still wasn’t quite ready to embrace the prospect of getting entirely submerged in the mud.

Neuk showed us how to control the amount of water flowing into each rice terrace by using a thick clod of mud. This is stuffed into the irrigation channel to block it or lifted out to let the water flow into the lower terraces. It was simple but remarkably effective! This method is needed because they sometimes allow fields to dry out completely in order to force the rice plants to grow stronger and deeper roots.

Step 5: Harvest

In Northern Laos, rice farmers are able to produce two harvests per year. From planting to harvest takes around two months during the dry season and more like five-six months during the wet season. Either way, once the plants turn yellow, this is a sign that they are ready to be harvested.

We were shown how to grab a plant, face the scythe away from our bodies, and cut rapidly through the stems. We then used one of the stems like a ribbon to tie the other stems together and perched this little bouquet on top of the stalks still protruding from the rice paddy. It is then left here in the sun for a week to dry out.

Step 6: Thresh and winnow

Now we had our rice crop, it was time to leave the fields (and attempt to clean our feet, although to be honest, that’s been an ongoing project over the last few days…) We learnt how to separate the grains from the rest of the plant by bashing them repeatedly on a wooden block. I didn’t try this bit, but it was clear from our group’s attempts that it wasn’t as easy as it looked!

Once the threshing stage was completed, this left a pile of grain, mixed in with chaff, leaves, and other bits and bobs that needed separating using a fan. Did you know this was called winnowing? I’ve just learnt this word while writing this post and I’m very pleased with it!

Step 7: Husk

The next stage was to remove the rice grain from its husk. Apparently there are strict gender roles at play here – men or boys do the stamping part and women do the mixing part, never the other way around. Typically, boys will get up around 4 or 5am and do an hour of husking before school. Quite the morning work out!

This stage leaves a big bowl of rice grains mixed in with the husks, and to separate the two involves putting them into a round tray and sieving them with an action similar to cooking in a wok. I’m not sure I quite had the knack, but I was much better at it than some of our group! Any waste from this stage is used as chicken or pig feed or can be used to produce rice wine.

Step 9: Soak and steam

In Laos, sticky rice is an important component of every meal. For breakfast, the rice is soaked overnight and then steamed in the morning for 20-30 minutes, turned over and steamed for a further 10 minutes. It’s seriously sticky stuff, so turning it over is much more like flipping a pancake than stirring a pot. After steaming, it is spread out on a large tray, which helps it to cool down and dry out a bit.

Step 10: Serve and eat!

Finally, it’s time to eat. Sticky rice is always served in a kong khao dok, a bamboo rice basket. I had assumed until this point that these baskets were also used to steam the rice, but I now realise that Laotians eat far too much sticky rice to mess around with steaming dainty little portions individually! Anyway, the baskets look really pretty but also keep the rice warm throughout the meal, which is important because in Lao cuisine, every bite should be eaten alongside a handful or spoonful of rice.

I love rice (like, really love it!) but I’m ashamed to say that other than admiring pretty terraces from afar, I didn’t really have any idea how it grew, what the plants looked like or quite how we ended up with rice from them. Even though some of the steps we learnt are the ‘ancient’ way of doing things and some farmers now have machines to replace steps in the process, it was still a really fascinating crash course and a gloriously muddy morning!

Our second destination in Laos was Luang Prabang, a UNESCO-listed World Heritage Town, located in the north of the country at the confluence of the Nam Khan River and the Mekong River.

The train

The super-modern, high-speed Boten–Vientiane railway links the Lao cities of Vientiane and Luang Prabang before heading for the Chinese border, and we were keen to make use of it on our journey through Laos. The owner of our guesthouse in Nong Khai had recommended that we “start working on the train tickets” as soon as we arrived in Vientiane, since acquiring said tickets was “a process”. Having bought a few tickets on this trip so far, I was pretty confident, until I hopped onto the Man In Seat 61‘s site and finally understood what Julian was talking about. It turns out that you can’t buy tickets online, the station is 13 km outside of the city, and the city centre booking office doesn’t accept cash or international credit cards! Reluctantly, we bought our tickets through an agent, with the inevitable commission added on top.

The train line is very impressive and almost brand new, given that passenger services only commenced in December 2021. The railway is a joint project between the Laotian and Chinese governments, and it represents the largest and most expensive infrastructure project in Laos ever. Our trip took only 1 hour 40 minutes to cover 238 km – a journey that otherwise would have taken at least 6 hours by road.

We completed the final hop from Luang Prabang train station to the city centre by a public minibus. This would have been a quick journey, had our fellow passengers not stopped the minibus for a lengthy interrogation of the poor driver regarding where they should disembark. It seems not everyone enjoys a good game of public transit roulette as much we do!

The town

The city centre of Luang Prabang is beautiful, and it exceeded both of our expectations. Almost every building was a tastefully-restored colonial building, with a traditional wooden sign above the front door of the business. For this reason it gave us Hội An vibes, but despite how many hotels and restaurants there were around the town centre, it rarely felt busy.

We were also fascinated by the pair of bamboo bridges that cross the Nam Khan River. We’d heard that each bridge is carefully constructed each year over a one-week period at the start of the dry season, and dismantled again before the wet season arrives and the river levels rise. Confusingly though, both bridges were in the process of being taken apart as we arrived despite it being the middle of the dry season. Clearly, the owners of the bridges knew something that we didn’t…

The waterfall

Just 30 km from Luang Prabang lies Kuang Si falls – a 60 m high cascade of water turned bright blue by the river’s limestone deposits. Following our recent success at the Angkor Wat, we opted for an early Tuk Tuk to the falls in an attempt to beat some of the crowds. We started the visit with a hike to the top of the waterfalls, where we followed a footpath away from the cliff and across a single plank bridge (!) to the source of the falls. Just as we’d hoped, we were the only ones there, and enjoyed a swim in the (very fresh!) water as it ran towards the falls.

On our way back down, we stopped for a swim at a few of the vividly blue travertines. The pools were absolutely stunning, and actually they weren’t nearly as busy as we’d feared – the whole place looked like the Garden of Eden.

But the best part of the waterfalls was possibly the bear sanctuary near the entrance. The sanctuary provides a very comfortable home to wild Asiatic Moon Bears that have been rescued from poachers who had previously kept them in cages for their valuable bile. Any bears that can’t be safely released back into the wild are given a home here or at one of the other sanctuaries run by Free the Bears. The bears seemed to love the wooden constructions in their enclosure – most of them were snoozing with one or two legs draped over the edge, and one was even relaxing in a hammock!

The hill

Soaring above Luang Prabang is Phousi Hill – a popular spot to watch the red sunset reflected in the Mekong River. Due to a scheduling anomaly, we arrived at the summit more than two hours before sunset, so we enjoyed the views through the haze from a rocky outcrop before plonking ourselves down on a bench to appreciate any hint of a passing breeze.

What followed sounded similar to everyone else’s experience at Angkor Wat, as our sunset view was gradually replaced by a view of other tourists’ backs. At times like this, I try to remind myself that we’re not in traffic, but we are traffic, so we did our best to enjoy the people watching in lieu of the sunset. Fortunately, we’d also brought couple of beers, which made the experience a lot more enjoyable than it could have been!

The food

Luang Prabang has a reputation for its international (read: French) cuisine, which seemed to cater exclusively to tourists. However, as is often the case, we found that the best food we ate was in local restaurants. One of our favourite meals was at a restaurant just around the corner from the Xieng Thong temple, where we tried Kow Beeak Sen – a soup containing slightly chewy tapioca noodles, pork, fried garlic and plenty of fresh bean shoots. To this, we added a squeeze of lime and a teaspoon of fiery chilli paste, which further elevated the experience. In fact, this really elevated the experience for Sara, since I put a very generous dollop into her bowl. By the end of the meal, she had a couple of tears running down her cheek, but still insisted she wouldn’t have it any other way!

We also thoroughly enjoyed eating at Nang Tao restaurant, where we tried Laap, a Lao favourite stir fry of meat, onion and fresh mint. I loved the contrast of the fresh herbs against the saltiness of the meat, and vowed to eat this dish a few more times before leaving Laos.

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Having zoomed north by rail, it was now time to fully embrace travelling slowly with a two-day cruise up the mighty Mekong River towards the golden triangle where Laos, Thailand and Myanmar meet.