Meandering Down the Mekong

Martha and I have a ritual of giving out awards at the end of the year – Best Dinner, Best New Place, Best Discovery are sample categories. I told her that for 2008, I had to confine my awards to the first eleven months and then do a special round for the trip. I didn’t end up doing that, but many of the awards – including the three mentioned above, along with Best Moment, Best New Place and Best Weekend – probably would have gone to the weekend of December 20-21, when Marilee and I went to Luang Prabang, Laos. I had told her that if there were any places on her list that she wanted to visit before she left, I’d be up for it. She chose that one, and to thank her for her hospitality I treated to hotel and dinner.


I didn’t expect to be going anywhere other than Thailand and Indonesia, so I didn’t do any advance planning, but since I had the Rough Guide to Southeast Asia with me as well, I was able to read up on Luang Prabang, which it calls the most perfectly preserved historic town in all Southeast Asia (the entire town is a UNESCO World Heritage site!) and on Laos in general (after years of xenophobic communist rule following the Vietnam War, it reopened its doors only in the 1990s) – and then the Bangkok Air magazine had an article about it, so I learned more while on their boutique flights. Thomas the Travel Agent arranged our airfare (a good one came through at the last minute) and we were able to get visas on demand when we landed.

It was a short flight from Bangkok; from the plane we could see the Mekong River and the whole of the historic town laid out. We went down to the river for an afternoon excursion, which took a group of four of us to Pak Ou caves, a repository for old and unwanted Buddha images that is a shrine in itself, and to a Whiskey Village across on the other bank (though Marilee and I were much more interested in the silk than in the fermented rice liquor – I bought a couple of table runners and she bought six scarves!). Those destinations were charming but so was the tranquil journey, with cultivation right next to the river and lush green forest behind it, hills on either side, and an occasional other boat passing by. Best Moment – if I felt really happy in the hammock, I felt both at peace and completely energized on that boat ride on the Mekong. The Mekong! I never would have dreamed I would go there. The welcome picture on the left frame was taken from the fields in front of that village – if there were such an award, it would get the trip award for Best Picture!