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Other entries in Chiang Khong

The Final Chiang

On the 12th February we were given a friendly farewell by the owners of the Chat House who had even given us much needed information regarding our bus to Chiang Khong and organised a tuk-tuk to take us to the bus station, at local price.  The atmosphere of Chat House, much like CM Bluehouse in Chiang Mai and Baan Lotus in Ayuthaya, makes all the difference to our continuous travels, it's like a home from home, of course we have stayed in better furnished dwellings but those guesthouses are hard pressed to match the ambience of these special places.  After a short 10 minute ride to the station we were met, as ever, by an eager bus attendent who, acting on information giving to him by our tuk-tuk driver of all people, picked up our bags and happily plonked us on the bus for Chiang Khong, even though it wasn't leaving for another 45 minutes.  Chiang Khong is two and a half hours north of Chiang Rai and it suited our travel ambitions that we should cross the border, via ferry, from this small and unremarkable town into the Laos town of Huay Xai.

The scenery was, once again, remarkable, maybe even more so than our bus journey to Chiang Rai but it was the people on our ordinary local government bus that interested us the most.  The bus seemed to be swarming with children and packed with fresh food, obviously a lot of these people were setting up market somewhere towards Chiang Khong and this being the cheapest method of transportation, by a clear mile, they had all jumped on board.  Our rucksacks were buried under bags of garlic, coriander, pineapple and ginger, all of which lent the bus a wonderful and aromatic scent.  The children were, for the most part, quiet souls who seemed far more interested at staring at us farang than making nuisances of themselves.  For the most part, our journey through Thailand, has been a series of stares from locals, on asking Ting why people continue to stare even though they've seen millions of farang by now he answered 'it's the national way, we all stare, all of the time.  Even at each other'.  A stare like that in England would always be taken the wrong way.  So the children continued to stare and cooed in glee whenever they got our attention, at one point I had 5 pairs of eyes on me, all staring with intense concentration, all studying the white man with the beard.

The bus pulled up along a row of unimpressive shops on a dusty side street, by now there were only 4 farang and a smattering of locals on board, alongside a group of tuk-tuk drivers balanced on the tips of their toes, trying to see inside the bus, trying to meet our eye.  'We here, this is Chiang Khong' our bus attendent helpfully pointed out and so on collecting our rucksacks, no longer buried under the produce of the market traders for they were long gone, we alighted the bus and were welcomed by the group of ever expectant tuk-tuk drivers.  Some serious haggling later, the tuk-tuk drivers in Chiang Khong start very high and it takes a great amount of bartering to get to a decent price, we were driving along the small, quiet main road of Chiang Khong, for all we know this could have been the extent of how big Chiang Khong actually was as we had no time to explore.  It was now mid-afternoon and on getting comfortable in our pre-booked guesthouse we took in the view of the Mekong River from our balcony.  Across the river, Huay Xai, Laos, stood as clear as day, we could even see the traffic and people swimming in the river on the other side.  It was too baffling to take in that across the river lay another country with different beliefs, values, customs and language, all separated by a single body of water.

On taking in the spectacular view we headed on into town to find food and to plan our imminent trip. Laos is a far poorer country than Thailand, a result of constant civil war and military coups, and have only recently, since 1989, begun to open their door to tourism.  Even more recent the government of Laos have made crossing the border simpler, poor relations of yesteryear with neighbouring countries Thailand and Vietnam had made crossing the border time consuming and expensive, with these issues resolved crossing into Laos has become a mere formality.  Several new border crossings have been put in place since the turn of the millennium and the cost of a 15 day visa has dramatically decreased, the only continuing problem to be addressed, of which people are confident will happen sooner than later, is the total lack of ATM machines, for there are none, at all, in the entire country.  So over a delicious bowl of Kao Soy, spicy with chicken on the bone, so tender, that it fell of as soon as your chopstick touched it, we discussed how much money we were going to need for our one month journey through Laos.  Reaching a sensible conclusion we headed on to a Internet cafe, to catch up on any e-mails, as we hadn't checked it for several days, in amongst several messages in our inbox was one from our friend Aideen.  This is how we learnt that we had just walked in to Chiang Khong during a public holiday, meaning that the banks will be closed on Monday, meaning that the dollars we were to need would not be available, meaning that we may have to stay an extra night in Chiang Khong. An extra night in this one horse town, where the horse had long since bolted.

There was no way we could even consider delaying our journey by a day, we had given ourselves around a month for Laos and we wanted to get the most out of it, so a revision to the original plan was in order.  On consulting our Lonely Planet even further it had this to say regarding the currency situation in Laos. 'Travelling in a country where the largest note amounts to only US$2 can be inconvenient, you can save luggage space by carrying most of your cash in baht along with smaller amounts of kip (Laos currency) and US dollars.'  So confident that we could make do with baht until we hit Luang Prabang, some 3 days hence, where we could change some baht into kip, we decided to go ahead with the original plan. Crisis avoided; no offence meant to Chiang Khong but it's not exactly aimed at travellers staying longer than 24 hours, we sat down on some steps by the river and stared across the vast and peaceful waterway.  We watched as some children swam in the river and raced each other, on spotting the farang watching them from the riverbank they began to show off and dunk each other, kids will be kids everywhere around the world so it seems. 

Our final meal in Northern Thailand was a bit of a disappointment, this past month has been something of a culinary wonderland and to leave on such a whimper of a meal was unfortunate.  Chiang Khong isn't exactly blessed with eateries but you can usually use the 'busier it is the better it is' rule of thumb when deciding on where to eat, this way of doing things has led us to some outstanding food however to use this method you first need people, which was something Chiang Khong was in very short supply of. There was hardly a soul about, we spotted around a dozen or so farang and not many more Thai, so clutching at straws we dived into a respectable looking place, just off the main road, ordered up a couple of dishes and waited eagerly.  The food wasn't awful, not burnt or undercooked, but average.  It had the ambition of most guesthouse food and everything tasted, as the Thai would say, 'same same ', a kind of bland, westernised taste that is as uninspiring as it is joyless.  On our first few days in Bangkok we experienced such cuisine, not knowing that it's not supposed to taste like that, and only when we started to stumble across the real thing did we avoid these places like the plague.  For the remainder of the evening we sat in a quiet bar and shared a large beer, both tired and a little nervous about crossing the border the following morning, we drank our drink and decided to call it an early night.   

Up bright and early, ok I lied it was around 9am, we took our last breakfast on Thai soil (well Northern Thai soil as we are to return in April/May to the south and the islands), we looked across the river to our new destination.  Afterwards, fixing our rucksacks to our person, we wandered outside and found a tuk-tuk parked in the street that could take us to the ferry crossing, however, as soon as the driver started his engine he was told to turn it off again by a policeman. We had walked straight into a procession; we believe in honour of the public holiday, so to pass the time we sat in the tuk-tuk watching as scores of people, dressed in the traditional dress of their tribe or in scout or military uniform, march straight pass us, smiling and waving to us as they went, almost as if the whole thing had been set up just to say goodbye to us.  Once they had passed we were off up the road and in no time we were at the crossing, getting our passport stamped at the Thailand Immigration Office.  We had to walk a little way, down a steep road and on the dry mud river banks to get to our ferry; an engined long tailed boat equipped to take around a dozen people, once aboard the engine roared into life and we were off to the other side.  Heading to Laos.  

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