Sometimes in Laos, You Are Expected to Get Out and Push - Nam Ou River - Slow Boat from Nong Khiaw to Laung Prabang

Today's adventure, which turned out to be more of an adventure than we expected, was a scenic boat ride down the Nam Ou River from Nong Khiaw to Laung Prabang. The good thing about Nong Khiaw having become a big tourist destination is that there are now normally enough people for the daily "public" boat to go to Laung Prabang, at $12 pp instead of chartering your own boat for more like $100, as (some) people were doing a couple years ago. These days Lao people generally take the bus as it is cheaper and faster.

From Drop Box

The scenery was, as promised, spectacular. We motored more powerfully and more constantly than I expected though, so we didn't really see much wildlife. Just cows, a few birds, and fish being pulled from the river in nets.

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

There were rapids in the river, and the water level was quite low, making us very glad that our boatman seemed to know the river well, and that our boat was of the flat bottomed variety that doesn't need much water. It was also reassuring to remind myself that the boat was surely worth more to him than the electronics in our bags are worth to us.

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The Laos people, villages, and uses of the river were very interesting. There were, of course, tons of children playing in the water and along the shore when we passed villages. And there were many people fishing, with small throw nets, larger nets left in the river with bamboo or plastic drink bottle floats, and we even saw a couple guys with goggles and harpoon guns.

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More curious were the strange bamboo tripod structures sticking out of the river and held down with large river stones. Sometimes there would be just one, other times there would be a dam of bamboo between multiple, forming a bit of a pool. One of the other passengers said they were associated with panning for gold and pointed out some gold-panners to us.

From Drop Box

From Drop Box

Finally, in a couple places, we saw similar bamboo structures holding what appeared to be steal poles dangling in the river, pulled sideways by the current, and for some reason spinning at great speed. This seemed very strange until I spotted the wire connecting them with the mainland. Small-scale hydroelectric turbines. Sweet.

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After about 3 hours on the river, we stopped at a sandy beach near a village for what we thought was a pee break, until our boatman informed us that the river up ahead was too shallow and we would have to walk a section to lighten the boat. We walked up to the road, loaded onto a minibus, and went a surprisingly long way before unloading and walking down to another beach and waiting for our boat.

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Along the way, we noticed many bulldozers along the river. We thought at first that they must be dredging the river to make it more navigable, but once we got back aboard and boated past some of them, their true purpose became clear--more gold mining.

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A while later, just as we were joining the Mekong River, we got to another very shallow area with rapids and all of a sudden, the boat ran a-ground! We started going sideways, then leaned over to one side. The boatman quickly got out (into shin-deep water) and told us all to do the same. So there we all were, walking shin-to-knee deep in the water along side our boat until we got to deeper water. We were all a little miffed at first, but, you know, it's all part of the adventure and it was actually kind of cool.

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Hardly had we all gotten back into the boat, however, when the boatman seemed to be having difficulty steering the boat into the channel that he wanted. For some reason, he didn't seem to want to engage the engine, which makes steering very difficult. He quickly climbed out of the "cockpit" area and around onto the front lip of the boat where he paddled frantically, then tried to push off a big rock in our path so hard that he fell backward off the boat and into the water. The passengers on that side also tried to push us away from the rocks, but they slid painfully along the side of the boat. Fortunately, they don't seem to have done too much damage, as we proceeded to finish the journey uneventfully.

Oh, yeah, and right after that, we passed a cave. Tham Ting cave, we think. We might go back and explore it another day.

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