The Magic of the Slow Boat

December 3, 2025

Huay Xai to Pak Beng

We've been on the two day slow boat on the Mekong River to Luang Prabang from Huay Xai several times but not in eleven years. It has always been, let me say, an interesting trip! The boats were always overloaded with too many people, the vast majority backpackers. They have gotten way too drunk, they've been oblivious of the boat dangerously listing to one side because of their need to all do selfies in the sun at once which has made the captain as well as anyone aboard who is the least bit aware of boat safety, incredibly nervous. They've been too loud and crazy and not sensitive to the locals on board. In short they have been obnoxious pains in the butt even though I already just said the trips were simply interesting. We were steeling ourselves for the worst even though I am generally quite optimistic especially when it comes to being on the Mekong. I love the Mekong so much that I can usually make myself tolerate the crazy young party people.

The reason Andrea and I were taking the boat trip again was because we knew there was going to be yet another dam built somewhere between Huay Xai and Luang Prabang in the near future. This will mean that the interesting two day boat trip would be a thing of the past - a tragedy, yet one more unique thing lost forever in Laos. We also wanted to see how Luang Prabang was doing since we hadn't been there in more than a decade. Luang Prabang is one of my favorite towns in the world.

At 7:30AM we lined up at the slow boat ticket window, the only foreigners that early. We have bikes, as you remember, and we always try to iron out any possible issues transporting them might present. But there were no issues, just more money for the bike fare. $20 per person - $7.50 per bike for the two full day's ride. Not bad at all. One of the last bargains in Laos.

Once we had our tickets with assigned seat numbers, #12 & #13, (unusually organized), we raced up the hill to the main street of Huay Xai looking for a woman who was making khaoji pate. They are french baguettes filled with all sorts of meats and sauces which you don't really want to watch being made or you might back out of the whole idea. We have never gotten ill from khaoji pates and they are the perfect food to take on the boat to make it a true Lao slow boat experience. Then we quickly walked back to our hotel which was called, and I'm not kidding, "One Minute to Slow Boat Guesthouse." It was by far the nicest, cleanest and best-run guesthouse we have ever stayed at in Huay Xai. I noticed on the front desk that they sold little round Lao Slow Boat stickers which I had to have to slap on my bike frame and then we were off down the hill to the boat for yet another slow boat adventure.

The woman operating our guest house in Huay Xai who spoke perfect English who answered our every question and dealt with our every need.

We found out which boat was the one going to Pak Beng, the town where we would spend one night enroute. Our bikes went up on the sheet metal roof of the long boat and loosely tied by a loosely caring crew member. Having been on the boats many times I knew it wasn't likely to rock so much that the bikes were in danger of slipping off so I didn't make a fuss. With each seat having a piece of paper with a number written on it I thought there would be no problems with seating but almost immediately I realized how wrong I was.

Andrea carrying her bike down to our boat, the green one.

The Lao have never made an adequate dock for the boats for easy boarding.

There was an older Lao couple across from us mute and already looking guilty of something. Our seats (and theirs) were pretty far forward on the boat which are coveted seats because you want to be as far from the hearing destroying engine in the rear of the boat. Right away a German couple wanted their seats and the two Lao didn't make a huge fuss because they just took the next two seats back which were still empty. But soon two Dutch women wanted those seats, which were theirs. The Lao couple dug in their heels and set their jaws. They were not moving. The Dutch women were pretty pissed about it and they dug in their heels by getting a crew member involved. But even the crew member couldn't dislodge the Lao couple. We were encouraging the Dutch women to not back down. After quite a lot of effort to get the Lao couple to move to wherever their assigned seats were, everyone gave up trying. The Lao sat there with very sour looks on their faces. An ugly start to the slow boat experience!

The lower left (out of the frame) are the Lao couple and behind them are the two Dutch women who were displaced.

The boat filled up but backpackers just kept coming down the hill and balancing across the gangplank with their enormous backpacks or suitcases for the next hour or more. We had been told to get to the boat at 8AM and that it leaves at 9AM but the reality is that it always leaves no sooner than 10AM. We sat and watched and tried to guess nationalities as well as personalities - always a fun thing to do. The Lao couple were doing the same but with more disgusted looks on their faces. They were some of the only Lao on board. When we finally pushed off I estimated there were at least 140 people aboard, well over the limit which I didn't have to know to know.

The last people to board were obviously the partiest party-goers with bags full of beer bottles and one guy was even carrying a styrofoam cooler. There were about six or seven of them and they fought their way down the narrow aisle all the way to the back where they were turned around because there just wasn't any room back there. A mat was spread on the floor right in front of us and that's where the partiest party people aboard were going to spread out their good time for the next seven hours! We initially moaned but held out some hope.

Within a half an hour after we pushed off, the first beers were being uncapped by the excited party group. The core group consisted of at least four Dutch women, a Canadian guy, a Lithuanian guy and a British woman. They all seemed to be friends, which they were, but most had just met the day before, I heard them say. This is how it works for young travelers. I know because I was one of them once. You are all in your early 20's, you take a bus to such and such place and during the bus ride you exchange information about traveling here and there, a place you heard was cool and why. You tell stories about where you have traveled and you tell each other where you are from. You are all the same age so you have the same energy and probably very similar interests. And you are all going in the same direction to the same place. You are all instantly friends and you stick together because obviously it is fun but unconsciously you stick together because there is safety in numbers. You become a tribe, a tribe of travelers - you are backpackers.

The core group settled into emptying some of those beers. I heard them say they had 25 beers collectively. They started playing UNO, some sort of card game that I thought children played. Well, they were pretty much children. They had a speaker and they played their playlist which surprisingly was full of 60's, 70's and 80's music which we loved because it was from our era. We couldn't believe they were playing those songs. They were even singing along! But they were absorbed in their game and not looking at the incredible beauty going by outside the boat.

Andrea and I were watching the beautiful scenery go by. Women were washing their clothes, naked kids were jumping into the edges of the mighty river, people were panning for gold on sandbars and the boat engine strained to get through areas of nasty whirlpools and rocks. The jungle was gorgeous, everything still very green. Occasionally little wooden unpainted houses appeared from the jungle stepping up the sides of the river pagoda-like. Fishermen in their little pine needle-like boats that floated just above the waterline checked their nets on the leeward sides of huge rock faces or even on the swift current side where they also had nets strung. Groups of water buffalo frollicked on beaches looking like the happiest water buffalo I've ever seen; totally free. I don't even think they were expected to do much work since the hillsides were too steep for them. This was a land of hillside rice, not rice in paddies. There were areas of slash and burn all the way to the tops of giant hills, green with crops. The steep hillside gardens carved out of the jungle put me in awe that people worked that hard. They were not people with time to play UNO.

Look at how enormous that tree is and how small the people are.

We occasionally picked up additional passengers or dropped them off on the banks of the river near to their homes.

The current in the Mekong is tremendous, the hydraulics of the river down right scary. To take a small boat out in the river you have to be very brave.

Looking towards the rear of the boat into the mass of more than 100 other passengers it seemed not many were doing much and a lot of them looked bored or were sleeping. All the action seemed to be right in front of us on the floor and I was happy about that. Directly across from us and looking directly at us were a German couple who looked as though they were trying to win the prize of being the most bored. They had no interest in anything and often looked exasperated and wishing the nightmare would end. Maybe they didin't care for backpackers. They never talked to anyone. The Lao couple who had stolen their seats from the Dutch had not changed their expressions at all. They looked as though they felt completely out of place in the midst of all the foreigners. I'm sure they were curious about all they were seeing but they never showed any expression. At one point the woman unfolded a large banana leaf which revealed a huge mass of what looked like thick, burnt goo. She pulled off hunks of it and shoved it towards her husband who enthusiastically wolfed it down. I honestly don't know what it was but it didn't look edible.

I would love to write a play about this slow boat trip. And I would love even more to stage it. There was so much going on amidst so little going on. There would be a hundred people sitting in the back doing nearly nothing but sitting there. A tiny pathway between three abreast on each side. Towards the front, on the floor a couple of steps up from the rear seated area is where the backpacker action was. Across from us would be the dead German couple, the guy periodically locking his hands over his face in despair. The Lao couple would be motionless most of the time.

Then I would have enlist an artist to paint a meter wide scroll of the shoreline, buffalo, naked kids swimming and playing in mud, women panning for gold on sandbars, cows, elephants on beaches (which we saw on one trip), lots of big green trees, lots of big rocks, boats, fishermen, houses, women washing clothes, little tiny boats, gigantic whirlpools and rapids and other large boats passing by. This scroll would be really long, like the width of the stage and be moving on a continuous loop in the background.

During the rainy season the water level was up to the trees.

So, the young backpackers occasionally came over to sit on the edge of the boat behind us with their bodies in the sun. They were basically hanging outside the boat and would occasionally be told to get back inside. They came over to the side of the boat to smoke cigarettes and drink beer and we started talking with them. They were quite interesting and interested in us and our story especially when we told them that our trip was a bike trip. They even wanted to know how Andrea and I met and they loved that story. I asked them all sorts of questions about themselves and their trip. I get energized from young people and it was really fun. They were actually interested in us, which, as we get older, is more and more rare. But that is the beauty of being trapped on a boat for two days. I feel we got to know them and I thought they were really nice people, every one of them. I felt sorry for the German couple as well as most of the passengers because they didn't have the experience we were having. It's important to rub shoulders with the younger generation and important for them to rub shoulders with an older generation. I felt they understood that quite well. I was super happy the group hadn't been able to be in the back of the boat and was put up in front of us.

Left is Riley from Newfoundland and to the right is the guy from Lithuania.

Then a miraculous thing happened. I had talked to the Canadian guy, Riley, the most and I knew he was getting quite drunk. He offered me a beer and I took him up on his offer simply so that he would have one less beer in his possession. He had been the one who had carried a styrofoam cooler onto the boat! Andrea and I split the ice cold Beer Lao and it tasted great. That's when we opened our can of Mister Potato potato chips.

At one point there was an empty seat across the aisle from the Lao couple and Riley plopped himself down in it probably because there was an attractive woman seated next to him but he was too drunk to talk to her. He put in his ear buds and pulled his cap over his face and I was relieved when it seemed he was falling asleep. During that time the woman next to him poured out some of the beer in his can saying, "He will never know."

Riley plopped down here. The woman wasn't too pleased but was kind and tolerant.

Riley woke up soon after and for some reason he took an interest in the Lao woman. He shook her hand and somehow made her smile! Then he just slipped one of his ear buds into her ear and together they were listening to his playlist! Soon she was dancing in her seat and Riley and she were laughing together and hugging. A couple of the Dutch women couldn't believe it and came over to join in the fun. The Lao woman was suddenly having a great time as well as the life of the party!! Her husband didn't want any part of her antics and certainly didn't want her getting him involved so he stuck his face out the side of the boat and acted like he was very interested in something out there. His wife, on the other hand, was having a blast with Riley and the rest of us. It was a complete turnaround in her character. Everyone was laughing, even some of the people behind were taking note and smiling. I guess we never really knew her and Riley somehow brought out her true character. We took photos, she took photos and she even wanted a photo of Andrea and myself kissing for some reason. The first two attempts were not good enough photos I guess because she kept having us do it again. Then she took photos of Riley, her new buddy. It had become an absolute riot with the Lao woman.

After Riley put one of his ear buds into the Lao woman's ear they listened to music together.

The Lao woman's husband is wondering if he could make it to shore should he decide to jump in to escape what was happening.

As the boat nears a nice beach the Lao man seriously considers jumping ship.

The Lao woman thought they made a lovely couple and wanted Riley to put his arm around her for a photo.

Her husband wants nothing do with this at all.

I've never had so much fun on the slow boat and it was mostly because of the young backpackers. No one got out of control at all. Everyone was simply interested in having a good time and interacting with anyone who was interested in interacting with them. Unfortunately, the German couple didn't want that at all.

We pulled into Pak Beng an hour before sunset and everyone filtered into the various, but all similarly awful, guest houses. No foreigners ever stay longer than overnight in Pak Beng which means it's a small town with a very strange flavor. For all who enter Laos on the slow boat, Pak Beng is really the first encounter they have with Lao or a Lao town. It's unfortunate because Pak Beng is basically the armpit town of Laos. It's better than it used to be, however. They seem to have gotten control of the rat problem, for instance. But the people are weird towards the tourists because they never have time to interact. They arrive, want dinner, sleep, maybe want breakfast but there is never really time before they have to get back on the boat to Luang Prabang. Pak Beng is a strange place for sure. I've been to Pak Beng many times and like the German couple, I put my hands over my face when I think of it. But forget Pak Beng, the boat trip was brilliant.

lovebruce

I guess because the river rises so much during the rainy season it would be difficult to build a dock.

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Suzanne GibsonBrilliant!
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1 month ago

Scott AndersonAnd that's only day one!
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1 month ago

Kathleen ClassenThat was an amazing post. Loved it.
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1 month ago

Bruce LellmanTo Kathleen ClassenThank you, Kathleen. It was fun to write it.
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1 month ago

Bruce LellmanTo Suzanne GibsonThank you, Suzanne. It sort of wrote itself. A fantastic day!
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1 month ago

Charlotte FloryDo your bikes stay up there overnight? I’ve been worried about them the whole time.
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1 month ago

Andrea BrownTo Charlotte FloryThe bikes got unloaded because it’s a different boat the next day.
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1 month ago

Bo LeeSince when did the long boats get so cushy? We only had wooden benches barely deep enough to fit our behinds. On the 2nd leg, we paid extra for 2 of the few upgraded seats - bucket seats apparently taken from a van.
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1 month ago

Bruce LellmanTo Bo LeeEverything changes. But I think there are still some with wooden benches. I used to love those, actually. They seemed more like the real thing.
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1 month ago