In yesterdays post I forgot to explain the Shompoo in the title. Not surprisingly it is the name of the Tour Company that runs the cruise. The boats resident guide made a point of telling us that is was not "Shampoo", and that it was the word for "pink" which was the color of the soft furnishings on the boat.

The second leg of this journey takes us to the Laos border town of Houay Xay approximately 120-130km of travel from last nights stop. The name of this town gave me a lot of trouble in terms of pronunciation, and also logistics. It was not until we were on the boat at the start of the journey that we got an understanding of how we would cross into Thailand at Houay Xay. It goes like this:

  • the boat docks in Houay Xay 10 km upstream from the new and current border crossing.

  • a private van takes boat passengers to the Laos side of the border

  • another bus takes all travelers going from Laos to Thailand over the Mekong via a newish bridge, called the "Friendship Bridge"

  • on the Thailand side after customs and immigration processing travellers pickup transport of their own to make the 1.5-2.0 hour drive to Chiang Rai, the nearest sizeable town/city.

Now to the days travel. For most of the day the river was in Lao territory, only at the end did Thailand territory become the true right bank. As we progressed the gold panning by locals continued but was also accompanied by small scale industrial mining, with earth moving equipment and mechanical washing plants. Also there was increased use of earth moving equipment for agriculture. The land became a bit flatter and there were more dwellings and more people but mostly the lifestyle appeared to be subsistence farming.

Mid way through the morning we made a stop at a Khmu village. In the photos below you can see the village kids building a "path" for us elderly tourists. This village was moved by the Lao government 7 years ago from the deep jungle to this location and the tour company sponsors a school and clean water supply in the village. The village population is 150 approx. There are a lot of children in that number.

As Thailand appeared on our west we noted a distinct change in the level of affluence, lots of roads, modern housing, a lot of flood mitigation work on the river bank.

As we departed the boat on the southern edge of Houay Xay we could not help but discuss how this 2 days gave us a glimpse of a lifestyle that is likely to vanish fast in the coming years as railways, roads and dams make their mark on, and open up, the country around the Mekong.

The border crossing went without any hassles, we met our transport and by 18:30 we were in our hotel room at The Legend Chiang Rai,