Taken from Mats “Sailor’s Log”  4.10-10.10

Day 1

And we have a take off! We started our little boat trip at noon after we hadbought it. We were actually supposed to buy another one that we had bargainedfor the day before but the owner didn't want to sell it to us anymore. Wellthis bigger boat is definitely better for our purpose. The total sum wasonemillionsevenhundredthousand WHAT A PRICE! ok, so that was about 140 euros ^^

The current flows slowly but surely to the south so in a way we’re on a freeride even though we do quite a bit of rowing. The sun was setting and wedecided to stop at some village to eat and sleep. It appeared that there weresome party going on and we were invited to join the festivities! After fewbeerlaos and some hulahula kind of dance (which seems to be very popular inLao), we were invited to sleep at MR DIN’s in his village across the river. :DFunny guy although he didn't speak a word of english. We ate and washed and thefullmoon was bright and beautiful in the sky. =)

It feels so chilled out to be here, among the rural Lao people, sleeping in abamboo hut and experiencing the village life. It is so different compared tothe modern luxury that we have back at home, but the people are just as happyand content… if not more (okay to be totally honest with u guys, one dude isspeaking on the phone right next to me) Globalisation... There is electricityhere but otherwise it is a very authentic place.  I feel rewarded whendoing things like this, taking the trouble to organize everything by ourselves.The independent traveller sounds good to our ear. "
Tomorrow we gonna tune our boat by adding some bamboo to it so you’ll see whatwe’ve come up with :D

Day 2

Woken up by a crazy rooster at eight ( he was screaming through the night)and decided to continue our journey. We skipped the "pimping" of ourcanoe cos it was cloudy in the  morning and Miki thought that he dontwanna build it if its not sunny. Destination Vientiane! -> and maaaaaaany kilometres,rapids and villages ahead of us. The day went by easily and we stopped on asmall beach during the heat of noon. We ate stickyrice which was given to us bya generous lady from the village (We're getting sick of this thing already,like tomato&egg mix in china although it’s good and healthy) but the onemango we had with us was delicious!

Result for the day was according to our guess 30km and we definitely can’t beaccurate cos we dont own a friggin map! would be useful... We were driftingaway nice and easy and decided to sleep at yet another village. A coupleof guys offered us a ride with their motorized canoe through some strong rapidsand we thought they offer it to us freely or with a small price, but when wegot to the village they ripped us off for 50,000kip (~5euros) for a few minutesride.  That’s big money for us.fuckers... We're starting to get annoyed by this rip off stuff already (gotripped off at the "restaurant" where we ate later also. Maybe that’sthe reason for all the swearing. :P The people in the first village were sonice... =)

Day 3

Battle strategy: Wake up at 6.30 and start paddling hard and achievesome distance before the noon sun strikes us down.

Result: It took us few hours to wake up and get to the boat only to find outthat our two machetes were stolen along with one of our paddles.F******S***!!!!! Well we got a new paddle from the same dude that ripped of usyesterday but Miki thought, “how he would know that we needed a paddle beforewe even asked.” Probably he stole it...

Stopped for lunch at quiet looking village... made out of bamboo. A huge crowdof children gathered around us to watch us eat. I wonder what they werethinking. They bid us farewell when we left and were amazed by the toy phonesMiki gave them. : )) He was relieved to give some away after carrying a dozenof them half way around the world. :D

We had taken some bananas and eggs with us in the morning and planned to sleepon a beach under the stars. So now we have a bonfire which beautifully lightsour little camp and we've been swimming and enjoying the sounds of the jungle.Cut few bamboo sticks and prepared our mosquito nets and its all done. We arethe hippies of Mekong as Miki said and we havequite an audience cos water buffalos keep walking right by us. Ida saw one 5meters away from our bonfire and Miki shoved it off by shouting and holding ahuge stick. Me and Ida got a bit scared... :D

Day 4

Too much rain over paradise.

It surprised us in the middle of the night. The Rain.  And why, why did ithad to happen just that night when we are sleeping under the stars?

The pages of my diary and most of our stuff are now wet and covered with sand.We escaped to the boat which had the roof on it but it was very uncomfortableto sleep cos it was lying very tilted on the beach. In the morning half of thebeach had melted away. Now I want the hammock and the beach more than ever.. Ithink we should charge our batteries for a while and enjoy more of thetravelling part, not just getting as fast as possible to Vientiane. That's the thing. To enjoy thetravel, live in the moment.  The most important thing is not yourdestination but how you get there and everything on the way.

We are getting used to these bamboo villages, stickyrice and the languagebarrier so it doesn't feel so exotic anymore. We slept in a village… made ofbamboo and washed in a river where we saw fireflies in the night. They werebeautiful and bounced around in the air like maniacs. Ida is my wife so thevillagers would not dare to lay their hands on her. :D
Its funny that people in Chinaalways asked that whether you’re studying but here people ask whether you’remarried.

Day 5
Hitchhiking on the Mekong

The usual morning routine.
Woke up in the village, roosters screaming like crazy and people looking at uslike rock stars. Ida is getting annoyed by the people always watching her. Butfor them we are a most unusual sight so what can we do but get along with it.
Hanging around for a few hours more in the village. We are still little tiredfrom the whole sleeping on the beach night. Then we walked back to our boatwhich was totally on sand due to the sinking water level. My approximationwould be 30cm daily (Miki disagrees.. he says I’m a dumbass). We lifted ourboat back into the water with the help of a few guys who asked for 20 000kipfor three minutes of hard work. Of course, this is Laos and they think that everytourist is rich as hell. We didn’t give them shit.

Well, lazy day, lazy paddling and everyone was lazy. We saw some rapids andMiki steering the boat from the front must have thought that its just one ofthose lame ass ones. Yeap it was, if not for the ROCK!!! CRASH! It sneaked upon us while we were sideways and for a moment it looked like we would flip. Idadropped her paddle and luckily nobody fell into the water :D  The rock had hit the canoe in centre and heldus stationary in the middle of the rapids. After a few moments of thinking wemoved to the front to disturb the weight distribution and voila, we got offnice and easy and the stream took us along its way again. No damage to the boatand I only had a small scratch on my fingertip. If only Ida had filmedit.. would have had nice footage to show to friends but then again, she mighthave dropped the camera...  we found the missing paddle spinning in awhirlpool about a hundred meters on and were, once again, fully equipped.

At some point we waved to this one guy and he steered next to us with hismotorboat. He offered us a ride to Paklai which is the next big city on the wayto Vientianeand now we are camping in a bamboo shelter with this guy and his friend. Eating,watching the moon shine, and mostly enjoying the campfire we built. :)
"By the rivers of Babylon"is playing and we are enjoying the freedom!! A question crawled to our minds:How many of our friends would do the same? Not so many I think.. Now I have thefeeling of being a long long way from home. Ah, this is life.
Tomorrow we arrive in Paklai.

Day 6

It appeared that these two generous guys were not as helpful as it had seemed.They asked us for the two hundred american dollars that we had promised themfor the ride to Paklai. Promised? Aaaah.. we realized that the “Songlai don”that they had been talking about all the time, was not a place along the way.:D Big misunderstanding on both our parts but they understood after some timethat we didn’t have such money and we were very sorry. We gave them ~20 eurosand they got on their way. This is getting really annoying though cos now wehave the idea of Lao people that all they want from us is money and they areonly being shallow. One may smile to you and greet nicely but still have theshining dollar image in his mind. Lao is a good backpacker country, but when youreally get off the beaten track you’ll probably get ripped off. I was kinda fedup with sleeping in the villages cos it reminds me of the days in the army, notshowering for three days, not enough food etc. (Miki and Ida think I’m a wuss).

Day 7

 Still criminal

We decided that we wanted to get to Vientianealong the Mekong, as was our goal in thebeginning, so we took the high-speed slow boat with our canoe strapped on theroof.

It took us 8 hours to get to the capital city whereas if wehad paddled it would have been another 14 days…

Upon our arrival in Vientianethe militia caught us and demanded to look at our passports… no problem, butthey saw us offloading our canoe. They saw Miki and me trying to park it andMiki falling into the river (LOL)! That’s when they really got interested inour story. First stop in Vientianewas the police station. We were very disappointed in ourselves because evenafter questioning we didn’t lose even a single drop of sweat. It would havebeen so cool if one of us had shit in their pants. :D Anyways they told us thatit is illegal for tourists to buy and sell canoes in Lao PDR. We didn’t tellthem that we had already used the boat from Luang Prabang to Paklai. In theiropinion only crazy people paddle the Mekong.They confiscated our canoe and wished us good luck for the rest of our trip… byland! (Extra emphasis added)

Anyway, despite these little mishaps it was a great experience! 6 days on ourown at the mercy of the Mighty Mekong river, WOW. It’ll make for good bedtimestories for our grand-children.