Heartbreak and Annoyance

December 4, 2025

Pakbeng to Luang Prabang

Pak Beng from our hotel - early morning.

Dear little friends,

Downstairs in the lobby of our Pakbeng hotel was a hot water dispenser and coffee packets. Sure, let’s have coffee! The hotel manager scuttled out when he saw me trying to pump the dispenser. “No work.”

He lifted the lid off and dipped a cup of very hot water into my coffee cup. Okay. This is Pakbeng. Things don’t work, this is normal. The lobby was dimly lit and when I went for another cup I tried that neat trick and nearly burned my fingers because I couldn’t see where the water level was. Pakbeng is a wince of a town and we couldn’t wait to get out of there. We packed up and headed down to the boat so our bikes could get loaded before the throngs arrived. Once loaded our panniers were once again chucked into the hold and since the seats weren’t numbered this time I grabbed some good ones where we could actually look out the window.

Bruce went back up to buy khaoji pates for the voyage. Apparently the lady selling them, who sells them every single day for dozens of people getting on the boat at the exact same time every day was behind and he had to wait an eternity to get our sandwiches. I didn’t see him again until we were nearly ready to go. While he waited he took a few photos. Surprising, I know.

Pak Beng is basically one street that goes up steeply from the river.

Meanwhile they had divided yesterday’s grossly overloaded passenger capacity into two separate boats. Some people got onto the other boat and then deplaned and went over to the boat we were on. The other boat had wooden seats, they looked uncomfortable. Or their friends were on our boat. There is a lot of middle school behavior with backpackers, to be honest.

This kind backpacker offered to help this old woman down the incredibly treacherous steps to the boat.

The Uno/Beerlao gang from yesterday seemed somewhat subdued, maybe hungover. They weren’t bringing on as much beer on board as the day before. This was a positive development in my view. No doubt Beerlao is more expensive in Pakbeng because… well, you know.

After the Pakbeng clouds lifted it was a beautiful day to be on the river, much cooler, we kept our layers on all day. The same amazing scenes were being played out, jungle, little pine needle boats, gold-panning, water buffaloes.

I have to say this though. We had some fun yesterday with the backpackers but I feel far less charitable toward them than Bruce. None of them took one look at where we were. They smoke far too much and as the day went on they took less pains to keep the smoke out of our faces. The UNO games continued, other card games as well. We were privy to several overheard conversations that were incredibly puerile. It was exhausting, these people. Since they cheaped out on the morning Beerlao purchases they were spending buckets of money buying it onboard. These are people sharing hostel rooms for $6 a night and they absolutely were spending that much per hour on beer.

Meanwhile Bruce and I are pretty much glued to the window. While the Mekong is still beautiful there are so many changes that it’s quite hard to bear. In 2014 there was one bridge that was under construction and that was quite distressing to us then. Today, there are five. Five. There are new roads on either side. It used to be perfectly wild jungle, you’d see working elephant camps and hill tribe trails.

But the worst of it was at the end of the afternoon as we approached Luang Prabang. Earlier while the boat negotiated some rocky rapids the boat driver’s wife came to the middle of the boat with handfuls of sticky rice, threw them on either side into the river and said a prayer. We had been waiting for this moment, it’s a tradition on these boats to feed the nagas (river spirits) with sticky rice, but it has always been done near a huge rock on the west side of the river. Why wasn’t she doing it there?

You know why? Because the huge rock is gone. Blasted and buried under a million tons of rock where a new dam is being built. These slow boat rides are going to be a thing of the past. It was awful to see and think about. The Mekong is being raped.

The scene on the boat was getting to me by this time. Between heartbreak and annoyance, I’d had enough. Time to get off this boat.

The Nam Ou River empties into the Mekong just this side of the giant rock.

As late afternoon approached we arrived at the boat landing, which was moved years ago to a spot 5 miles from town, which is insane. The other boat landed at the bottom of a sloping road. Our boat landed at the bottom of a ridiculously steep set of cement steps. Everybody, fit or not fit, was struggling to get to the top. A very lovely German guy that Bruce had been chatting with took it upon himself to carry one of our bikes up behind Bruce with the other. Bruce had no idea this was going to happen, he just turned around mid-steps and our bike angel said to him, “You don’t want to do this twice.” Absolute sweetheart, that guy, we are so grateful.

The man in the sunglasses simply grabbed one of our bikes and carried it up the stairs. It was not an easy task. The kindness of strangers!

I had two bags and an extra hand to help a Lao teenager with her suitcase. I stood up at the top groaning and gasping for breath while Bruce made TWO more trips up with all of our panniers, which if you remember, were at the bottom of the hold.

The sweet moment is, that even though our stuff was the last off of the boat, we were out of there way before all of the passengers had gotten themselves arranged and paid on various tuk-tuks. We got a mile head start. The road was dusty, potholed, busy, it was rush hour in Luang Prabang. Because we were on bicycles we could take a shortcut on the “motorcycle bridge”, a shaky French-era beast with two separate tracks made up of mismatched wooden boards, with a line of buzzing motorbikes going each direction.

Bruce did just fine on the bridge. Me, I started to wobble and it was all over, I walked the central part of the bridge. I’m pretty sure the same thing happened 11 years ago.

You can see my blue helmet behind that motorcyclist as I carefully pick my way off of that terrifying bridge.

We are housed at the Villa Philaylack, a place we reserved one night for, hoping to negotiate a price with the manager for additional nights. Nope. Fully booked. As it turns out we had kind of a dismal room on the ground floor so we’ll just find another place tomorrow. We showered and headed to the night market for some food. We are just getting a glimpse of some of the big, big changes in Luang Prabang over the last 11 years and this night market eating area is one of them. A couple from Arizona who had been on our first day boat sat down next to us and we covered a lot of American topics, which was fun, we don’t get to talk to other Americans over here very often.

I certainly wasn’t up to walking through the evening craft market that unloads onto the main street every single evening in Luang Prabang. It was a nice night to walk down towards the river front, check to see if Pomachan’s coffee place was still a thing (yes, we’ll go there tomorrow morning), and noted some new restaurants on the river street that were completely deserted. Then back to our dismal room to fall into bed. Tomorrow we’ll get something better. That’s what we tell ourselves.

Today's ride: 5 miles (8 km)
Total: 397 miles (639 km)

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Scott AndersonSuch a poignant post, Andrea. That's the curse of returning to places you love.
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1 month ago

Steve Miller/GrampiesWhat Scott said. Sometimes it is great to go back to much loved places, but all too often it is bittersweet. Things change, except in memory.
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1 month ago