Ban Houay Xay to Pak Beng

I'd been on the two day Shompoo Cruise from Ban Houay Xay to Luang Prabang the year before and enjoyed it so much I booked again, for what's included it’s really good value- $USD190.00 (less than the cost of a direct flight), for two days on the boat including a very good lunch, overnight accommodation (including dinner) and pick-up and drop-off to my respective hotels. There are three types of down river transport for tourists: speed boat, backpacker slow boat and tourist slow boat.

The speedboat takes about 7 hours, stopping at Pak Beng for lunch. Having seen the way people are packed in and the velocity at which the boat zooms and zips along the river- no thanks. You often see the speedboats roaring along with the helmsman wearing a motorbike crash helmet, while the passengers are usually bareheaded. The backpacker slow boat is more like a bus on water, packed rows of forward facing bus style seats- six abreast divided by a central aisle. Then there are tourist slow boats like I was on; more space, nice lunch, couple of stops along the way etc.

After lunch we called into one of the villages that the cruise company assists before continuing on to our over night stop at Pak Beng, where most of the slow cruise boats overnight. One of the really nice things about the trip is the opportunity to experience the sunset by the boat landing as the later boats came in for the night.

These photos are from October 2018 when water levels in the Mekong River were very high in 2019 I returned for the same trip and saw the lowest water levels in 60 years, to compare the difference on my photos of Houay Xai 2019, Ban Houay Xai to Pak Beng 10/10/2019 and Pak Beng to Luang Prabang 11/10/2019.