A day on the river: And then I built a water slide
"I had a feeling this might happen" I said to Dea as we waited down at the boat harbour in Muang Khoua whilst Michael grew increasingly red-faced arguing into his phone. "I have paid you a lot of money to charter this boat, and you told me that I could take more passengers if I wanted to!" he remonstrated, "It is my boat, I have chartered the boat! No, you listen to me, they do not have to pay more money" and so on like this for some considerable time. The problem was, of course, that Dea and I were effectively getting a free ride, which didn't sit well with the man in charge of the harbour, and so he insisted that we should have to take the public boat, or, at the very least, slide a few hundred thousand kip his way. And it seemed that the man that had rented the boat to Michael and Gisela in Nong Khiaw was agreeing, and now Michael was standing his ground.
The arguing went on for the best part of an hour. There were only two boats, ours and the public boat, and neither captain was going anywhere until they got some more money. "We were warned to watch out for problems with official people" Gisela said of the man in charge of the harbour who was sniffing around for this money. "He's not an official person," I answered, "he's just a silly little man with a clipboard." And he certainly was little. We all agreed he had a terrible Napoleon complex because of his height and I thought it might be nice if Dea would go and stand next to him to see if that helped him resolve any of his issues.
If you're ever up river yourself, do watch out for this silly little man
We loaded our bikes and things onto the boat and sat on it anyway and refused to pay. Michael had only paid half of the agreed fee for chartering the boat up front anyway, so the ball appeared to be well and truly in his court. Then a couple more people showed up and filled the last two seats on the public boat and as a consequence of this we could all finally leave.
The public boat had a chicken on the front. It belonged to a German man who had bought it out of sympathy in order to set it free in Nong Khiaw. What a nice idea
Despite this unsavory beginning we then had a most wonderful day on the river. The boat was long and thin and came with four comfortable seats for us. The captain sat in a camouflage shirt at the front hunched over the steering wheel, possibly sulking, whilst a fat woman who may have been his wife lay down at the back and dozed off. The motor that powered us was noisy but the scenery was lovely and the river quite exciting. We frequently encountered rapids that the captain expertly steered us through and the banks were mostly wild and untamed forest interspersed with many empty beaches. And best of all, I didn't need to use my legs for anything!
Michael and Gisela on board. You've got to love that smile!
Come lunchtime we stopped on one of these deserted beaches and made ourselves right at home. Michael had brought his fishing gear and the captain, now much more friendly, ran off and quickly procured for him the largest worm any of us had ever seen to use as bait. Alas for poor Michael that worm remained the catch of the day and no actual fish were captured. Whilst Michael busied himself not catching fish the other three of us went and lounged in the sun and swam in the refreshing river. The white sand on the beach grew so hot that walking on it hurt the soles of our feet and I often found myself dancing around and then jumping back in the water to cool off.
I think I'm starting to overuse the word 'paradise' but... you know... look!
By way of entertaining ourselves further I challenged Dea to a sand castle building competition, although she strangely then constructed an artistic, if somewhat phallic, sand palace. Nevertheless our judge, the captain, declared her's to be the winner. Furious I next challenged Dea to a sand castle battle. The battle had a few complicated rules that I won't go into, but essentially it involved throwing wet sand-balls at one another's castle until one was destroyed. Suddenly Dea's penis turrets didn't seem so formidable, and the benefits of my short and sturdy structure became apparent. I was the inevitable winner and after the complete destruction of Dea's palace I moved the bulldozers in and constructed a water slide there instead.
Dea putting the finishing touches to her intricate piece of art
We whiled away many hours on that idyllic beach before finally the captain managed to get us all back on board and we were able to continue. But, as the scenery became even more spectacular, we made another stop further downstream at a 'weaving village.' Here pretty much every home had a weaving loom outside and it was obviously a place where all of the boats stopped in order to try and get some tourist dollars spent on the pretty shawls and scarfs and other garments being produced. We didn't buy anything and I didn't really like the way it was set up for tourists like that, but I did like the village very much. It was impossibly picturesque, surrounded as it was by impressive sheer-faced mountains, and children and friendly dogs greeted us with every turn. But what I most liked about it was, with no roads in or out, the complete and utter lack of traffic. Bliss.
These poor girls had to carry these bundles of wood up a lot of steps to get to the village. I wanted to offer to help, but I couldn't even lift the bundles up they were so heavy
After another hour sailing through more spectacular high mountain scenery it was almost dark by the time we pulled up in Nong Khiaw. And almost as soon as we had left the boat and got our things together on the beach I had a sudden and most welcome reunion with an old friend. Dino, that scallywag off of NZ Bound by Bike, came down the beach and gave me a big hug. I was very pleased to see him again for many reasons, but the primary one was because he was very strong and he quickly scooped up all four of my very heavy panniers and carried them all up the many steps to the town above us. Once again Suzy and Dino had scouted out the very best accommodation for us, which just so happened to be right at the top of those steps, and we moved right on in.
On the balcony of our guesthouse - these two seemed to be getting on famously!
Dinner that night was special and spent with the company of many wonderful people - it was our last night with Michael and Gisela and our first with Suzy and Dino. It was the first time Dea had met Suzy and Dino of course, and the first time I'd seen them since I'd tiptoed out of the Tehran apartment we'd all been staying in early one morning in late April, leaving them still asleep on the floor. This was, I should add, not to try and get away from them, but simply because I had to get going east, whilst they took a tour of southern Iran. Since then they had come within a day of catching me up in Tajikistan before I zoomed on ahead again. But with my lengthy detour through Siberia and Mongolia they had nipped in ahead of me and, after also completing the China Challenge, had been taking things so easy since arriving in Laos that even Dea and I had been able to catch up to them. "Are you leaving tomorrow?" I asked. "No, no, we'll stay another day!" Suzy said. They were in no hurry now, and I understood completely, as their rush across China had been even more incredible then mine, starting as they did from the Kazakhstan border rather than the Mongolian one. Naturally our catching up soon turned into a 'discussion of reasons why we hate China' and I daresay this thrilling conversation may have explained why Michael and Gisela sneaked away to bed as soon as they could. Poor Dea had to put up with our China-bashing a bit longer though.
Suzy - "Ah don't get me started on the beeping!"Chris - "The beeping was the worst, but what about the people, so inconsiderate"Dino - "It was tough."Suzy - "I can't believe we cycled that far."Chris - "I'm so glad to be out of China, hardest thing I've ever done"Dea - "zzzzzzzzzz"
