South East Asia – Muang Pakbeng, Laos – 2024 – Part 8

Now we are leaving Thailand and entering the country of Laos. On this occasion, the bus didn’t drive over the border, there was a reason but I forget. We had to get out and walk with our suitcases to the border, about a 10 minute walk I think. We got there and filled out some paperwork to go with our visas and then we walked over the border into Laos. I just want to note that G Adventures is our favourite tour company but if you want a luxury trip where you don’t carry your luggage, you sometimes sleep in villagers houses or have very rustic hotel rooms or other things of that nature, don’t book with them! We love them BECAUSE of all these things.

So now we are headed to our boat and we are going to travel the Mekong River for two days. Our boat is very long and narrow with washrooms in the back and then tables and chairs inside and then you can go out on the front of the boat and there are other chairs and two lounge chairs. The first day we did about a 160 km down the river and it took about 8 hours. They cooked food for us and we had beer and other beverages and there was always something to see.

As a side note, I am having issues with WordPress and for some reason cannot put captions under my photos any more. According to them, it’s my responsibility to figure this out so let’s just say I am not happy with WordPress right now.

So below are photos of the river and the boat we were on for 2 days. Also a photo of me with a beer, big surprise! and one of Clint, also with a beer and they were huge bottles!

We stopped for the nightat the Mekong Riverside Lodge in Pakbeng Town. We had to get out of the boat and climb up a hill to get to a very steep set of stairs to get to the top.

When we got to the top, we looked back to the river and saw all the boats tied up, one of them is our boat.

We had a lovely room with a balcony and a wonderful view of the river. We sat outside for a while that evening and the next morning as well.

Photos are – our room, our balcony and the river

After we got unpacked, we all walked into town about a 5 minute walk.

We went to a market where they sold a multitude of items, including live toads and pigs’ ears. I may skip dinner lol

First photo is Pigs ears, then live toads in plastic bags and then some other vendors.

We had a nice dinner in a cute little restaurant guarded by a street cat. I could not believe how many photos I took of street cats and dogs on this trip, well actually I can believe it because I love animals.

Tomorrow morning, it’s back on the boat !

9 thoughts on “South East Asia – Muang Pakbeng, Laos – 2024 – Part 8”

  2. You certainly have captured the flavor of Laos – the boat trip looks like it was fun and your hotel with the balcony very nice too. It seems there were so many things to see, you wouldn’t know where to look first (well, maybe casting your eyes away from the pig’s ears and bagged-up frogs).

    [I had trouble doing captions for Sunday’s post. I don’t always use captions, but it took me forever to do those and they seemed different to me, like they were part of the picture, as opposed to underneath the picture. I have also noticed an inability to make the picture larger once you upload it into the post … smaller is fine, larger no. I always like to make my header image a little larger than the rest of the pics … that doesn’t work even if you make the image larger before uploading it.]

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. haha yes I tried not to look at the pigs ears or frogs but I looked anyway, I had never seen frogs in bags before !

      I have been having a lot of trouble with WordPress, just in the last 2 months and I have been using it about 8 years now. I have emailed them numerous times but I do not get any satisfaction. I can’t even delete pictures from my posts when I am working on them, I have to backspace. And I have to do the comments differently too. Anyways, it’s very annoying but I don’t know what else to do. Sorry you are having troubles too.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

      1. The frogs in the bags – that’s really different. In Spain with my friends, since she was Spanish, we could go to out-of-the-way places to eat. In Madrid where her family lived, we’d stop at this little bar set up in the middle of the street. You’d have a drink and get some shrimp … they’d toss it on the grill a half-minute and hand it to you, not deveined, which I had a problem with that, plus they had this dip sitting out in the sun. I never got used to it and often passed. Plus the eels in a dish. They looked like pencils and you’d point how many you wanted and the guy fished them out with his hands and handed them to you – no, just no, I couldn’t do it. 🙂

        The captions are weird. I did my Sunday post and did a couple of captions and the space after the captions is too big, the captions which I usually boldface, I had trouble with that. I like making it look good for the actual site (underline and justification doesn’t show up) but it takes twice as long. I always think of the saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!” I reply to comments in Reader so I know the comment/like work properly.

        Like

  3. A ten-minute walk with luggage can be a lot for some! Thank you so much for sharing your journeys. I will never tire of admiring the abundant fresh produce and learning from and about other cultures. I would like to be as chill as that cat. 😁🙏🏻

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a reply to Linda Schaub Cancel reply