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We might even come back....
Mucking about on the river!!! Ain't it marvellous! It certainly is when you get dropped for an overnight stay in the middle of NOWHERE, Laos and get mobbed by almost the entire population of the town saying "Meesta, Meesta you come stay my guest house" having been drinking all day.... Such was our intro to Pakbeng. Still it all went uphill from there. Literally. Scramble to get the bags off the boat, then decide on a guest house & start marchin'. Not very far at all, until we find out they're full & keep going. Anyway, we ended up in a decent enough place for the night - then had to work out whether we were getting swindled or not on the Baht / Kip front. We realised later that no matter how much they charged it's still likely to be less than a pound!
So we settled in, had a little wander around the village, which is pretty much there for the boat stop over & nothing else. Had dinner in a nice enough little place & were all ready for bed when it started hammering down. Not that we really needed an excuse to stay for another, but it would have been plain rude not to. And how right we were!! Sat around playing cards with a couple of German guys & then realised that the owner of the "restaurant" is watching Liverpool v Chelski... So we crammed in to his little living room, the only room apart from the bedroom & watched the game with a couple more Beer Lao and one poor soul deciding to try the local whisky... Fantastically, the power was shut off 10 minutes after the final whistle so my many, many torches came in handy.
So, after that pleasant stop it was back on the boat for a prompt 8am departure.... or so we were told. Going by the first day, timetables are for reference only. They are not under any circumstances to be adhered to. Finally get going at about 9.45 & it's much more subdued on the boat mainly due to the previous days excess'. More stunning scenery than you can shake a really, really big stick at etc, etc. Picked up quite a few more Laos people today than yesterday, so we got a chance to get up close to the riverside villages - some good photo's around. About mid-afternoon we stopped at one, a couple of people got on & then the fun started. They were trying to get 2 fully grown pigs onto the boat, presumably to go to market. But boy did they not want to go!!! They made an awful lot of noise about it & got a right good pasting from The Pig Man & his stick into the bargain. Finally they got on & were presumably tied to the front of the boat, only not very well - he didn't know his sheepshank from his clove hitch!!! About 30 minutes after we'd picked them up piggy no 1 (we shall call him Capt. Hilts) decided to try his luck with the Mekong!!! This didn't work too well however as he was still securely anchored by one leg to the boat & Mr Pig managed to reel him back in, probably breaking one of his legs in the process.
And that's about as exciting as it gets - on to Luang Prabang!!!!!
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