Up the Mekong

June 20

Still need to finish the rest of June 19 and then I will post that one as well...

7:41am Laos time

This morning we got up at 5:30am to go give alms to the monks. It is tradition to do this in Asian countries. Monks can only eat before noon and I believe they survive off of donations from people. Matt told us that all the monks from all the temples walk down the street and you buy rice and put it in their pot. You're supposed to sit with both knees on the ground so your feet face away from them. You're also not supposed to break the procession of monks (don't walk in the middle of the same temple group) and you're not supposed to get up and walk away while the monks are still walking past. He told us to leave about 5:45am. That was too late...

We got there and most of the monks had past already. There was one temple of monks that was still walking by. We quickly rushed to go buy rice. Katrina and Melissa ended up getting it first and being able to sit down and offer the monks alms but the rest of us missed it. We bought our rice and went to sit down and do the same and a lady told us it was over. Everyone around us was packing up. So that sucked. We have our rice and the bamboo containers back to the women who had sold it to us. They wanted to give it to us to take away but none of us did that except for Ed. And then Ed managed to throw most of it on the street for animals or into holes and eat some and then trashed it at the hotel. I was a little annoyed that Matt had told us the incorrect time but to be fair, this is the first time it has happened on this trip whereas in India and Nepal it pretty much happened all the time. We did at least get to see a little bit of it. The rice only cost 10,000 kip ($1.25). It just would have been nice to actually give the monks the rice.

We got back to the hotel and pretty much just grabbed our bags and left. We headed to the Mekong on a bus about 20 minutes from the hotel and then we boarded our boat.

We had to walk down the side of a big hill. Luckily, there were steps for us. Some normal ones at first but then it was steps basically on dirt/mud that were just mats woven from bamboo essentially. There were a fair amount of steps. The hill was pretty big. Then we walked down some more of the hill that was all dirt and got to the side of the river. The boats are long boats. Like really really really long boats. They sit pretty low in the water as well. There is a roof area and 3 "rooms". There's the bar area where free coffee, tea, and fruit are provided. There is an area with seats and a table. 4 seats to 1 table. And then there is a sun bathing area where the roof can come off.

To get from the land to the boat we had to walk across the tiniest plank in the world. Maybe not the tiniest, but it was really thin. Like both your feet could fit standing together with maybe a little extra room on either side. And we all had our bags with us. Many bags haha. We crossed over to one boat and took a few steps on that one just to cross to the next one which was our boat.

We have about 9 or 10 hours on the boat today. Matt told us some rules. There is actually a family that lives on here as well. I think there is a cabin for their home on the boat as well but obviously that is their private quarters. He said that we needed to make sure that we don't put our feet up higher than our head because the head is the most sacred thing and your feet are really dirty and shouldn't be above your head in Buddhist religion. He also said to make sure that you don't put your feet up across the aisle. They will not cross over your feet so if we did that they wouldn't e able to walk through. It is also raining now. Should be a good time...

6:31am the 21st Laos time

Well, yesterday was definitely an experience!

We ended up arriving to the village around 4:30pm. We had been on the boat for 9 or so hours. We passed the time by playing cards, sleeping, and talking. Ed, Saskia, Bart, Kat, and I played Koi, the Vietnamese card game. We then switched to B.S. with 2 decks and finally finished out with Texas Hold 'Em. I didn't remember how to play and I was actually pretty confused while learning. Ed had to write out all the possible combinations for me haha. We were using toothpicks and sugar packets as 1 and 10 chips. Even though I sucked, it was still pretty fun. On the last hand we went all in and I ended up winning with a pair of 5s haha.

When we got to the homestay village, we got off the boat and Home, our Laotian tour guide, took us around the village. Home is really difficult to understand. He isn't very confident in his English and he jumps around a lot of topic while he is talking and it gets confusing. What I gathered from his tour was this:
1. There are 500 people in the village, 69 families.
2. They are farmers. They have to walk a ways to get to the farmland though.
3. They are very far away from medical help. The nearest city is 45 minutes by boat up the Mekong.

There are a TON of farm animals roaming around. Chickens, pigs, dogs, roosters, ducks, turkeys. It is very busy! There are also many children. The houses are all on stilts. They have a lower level and then a higher level. I think the higher level was the sleeping area. We weren't really able to explore their house. They don't speak English so we couldn't really talk to them about things either. They are pretty impressive. None of them were really made of bamboo or straw, except for some student quarters where students from other villages live during the school year. They were mostly made of cement, brick, and scrap metal for the roofs.

We saw where we were sleeping. It was upstairs on little mattresses that were on the floor and had a sheet covering it, a pillow, and a blanket. I'm not sure who in their right mind thought we would need a blanket, but nonetheless, it was provided. When we first saw the sleep area the mosquito nets weren't up. Matt told us they put them up later and that all our bedding and mosquito nets were provided by the travel agency in Laos that we are traveling under. There is a certain standard of cleanliness the village has to achieve in order to be able to host homestays. Us staying in their village is beneficial for them as well because our money supports the projects they have going on there.

I was really bummed for 2 reasons. I left y spare battery on the boat and my camera ended up dying. I didn't get photos of the schools but that was pretty much all I missed. There was also a point when I looked up and there was a man looking out a window that was covered in wire and his face and hands were poking through it. It would have been such a great photo. But I took too long to like up the shot and tried to make it clean so there were no people in it and he left the window. I was so mad at myself for not taking the picture sooner. The man was looking out watching us. A lot of them were taking photos of us and they were all watching us as we walked around their village. This surprised a lot of people because Matt told us that in the high season they end up having a homestay group almost every day.

We then went up to see the schools. The schools are at the top of the hill. It is a pretty steep climb to get up there, although compared to our trek it was nothing haha. There was a high school and a middle school. Although I think the high school may have actually been for elementary kids because the chairs were very tiny. Also, I thought he said that the high school was about an hour away. They were working on rebuilding one of the schools as well but they weren't very far in the process. It was basically a few bamboo sticks coming up from the ground. The rooms of the school were pretty small and the walls were almost completely bare. It was summer vacation so the furniture was mostly stored in the corner or against a wall.

We then walked back down to the boat for dinner. (I need some better transition sentences for and then we did this ha).

I forgot to mention that from the river front you had to climb up a sandy beach hill and then up a rocky dirt path hill to get to the village. Also a piece of cake compared to our trek earlier but most people seemed to not enjoy it. There was literally a noticeable temperature difference between being on the top of the hill and being at the bottom of the hill. Standing up there was so ridiculously hot.

Dinner on the boat was really good. It was sticky rice, chicken curry, ginger pork (not my fav), morning glory and some green bean type things. I liked the curry a lot, probably even better than the curries I had in India. I don't think I'm a curry person though. Around 6:45pm we headed up to our houses for the night. I was sleeping with Laura and Zara.

We had a really good time laughing and joking around about things such as how slowly time was passing (at first 12 minutes felt like an hour) and how hot it was. It was like a sauna. It was boiling in there.

I talked about the elephant camp a bit and they thought it was funny I had paid to do a week of manual labor. They also said they wished I would have told them about it before the elephant riding because they wouldn't have done it and given those companies money. I had told a few people but they still wanted to do it and I also wasn't going to expect everyone else not to ride.

They told me I should be a tour guide because apparently I know everything and would be good at it. I think it would be a pretty cool job. Especially if you have the outlook Matt has.

I took me deet with 98% with me into the homestay. We ended up spraying the mosquito net but then after I felt like that was something we shouldn't have done. But then I couldn't remember if I was confusing double mosquito protection with double condom protection or if you actually weren't supposed to spray a mosquito net.

Our family ended up turning off the light around 7:30 or 8pm. We were in a separate room from them. The doors were also open for a while and one lady went outside to use the phone. It started lightening and quietly thundering and then a while later the rain started. I didn't hear any thunder after that though. Laura really had to pee and was trying to talk herself out of it but she got up anyway and went after a while. Zara had already fallen asleep. When she came back it freaked Zara out because she woke up and all she saw was a flash light moving toward us. She frantically started tapping me. Once she figured out it was just Laura we all had a good laugh again. Laura said the bathroom was pretty clean and that it was a little creepy because everything was really wet due to the rain. The cistern was definitely full.

The sheets were much cleaner than I thought they would be and I didn't feel the need to use my sleeping bag. I did drape my jacket over the pillow though. I did that at a lot of the hotels in India and Nepal as well and I have no idea why.

We kept wondering if the other groups were still awake and thought we kept hearing them, but it could have been the TV from another home. We also wondered if Sarah had taken sleeping pills. Laura was completely convinced everyone was still awake.

I was pretty convinced that tomorrow was going to be a cluster fuck. Matt said that we take the boat ride (we have to leave so early because the border closes at 6pm) which will be 10 or 11 hours, get in a tuk tuk, do the paperwork and then get in a boat and cross the Mekong into Thailand. I figured we would all be tired and slap happy and be ready for a shower so I was determined to get some sleep tonight.

We knew we had to get up at 4:45am and that we had to make our way down the hill in pitch black to get to the boat before it departed at 5am for the border crossing.