One thing about always being hungover when packing your bag to leave a place is that, eventually, you get rather good at it. It helped that I’d left a lot of my extraneous equipment in Bangkok so there was less to pack than on previous occasions. I got away in plenty of time to get breakfasted before meeting with my kayaking guide and the rest of our party…only to find that they expected us to breakfast with them. Irritated at the loss of an hour’s kip, I deliberately refused to sit around and wait for other people to turn up and sloped off to an internet café to use my extra hour productively.
Back at the tour agency, I was pleased to see that there were only five of us on the trip. I can’t say that I got to know my companions particularly well…the only one whose name I remember was an American guy, Michael. The rest of our party was made up by a young Australian girl (talkative) and a really sweet (no, really they were!) French couple. The trip wasn’t really a group affair – as long as our guide was in front of us, we were free to follow down the river at our own pace. The only times we were together, other than in the pick-up at either end of the river sections, was over lunch and when we went cliff-jumping. I must admit that at these two times, my attention was distracted by the members of the other kayaking party that were following us down the river. To be precise, a beautiful Dutch girl called Hesther was distracting me…and of course with my Dutch family (any tenuous connection will do where a beautiful girl’s involved!) I felt it only right and proper that I should try to get to know her.
The big downer of the day was the fact that (no sizeist jokes here, please!) I’d been lumbered with a two-seater kayak…on my own. This behemoth was difficult enough to manoeuvre as it was, without the added inconvenience of it shipping water. In the end, this excess ballast was enough to have the lumbering hulk tipping me into the water at the merest sniff of movement on my part. Despite this, I couldn’t help but enjoy the beautiful surroundings (more mountains and rivers with blue skies and sunshine to boot!) and generally peaceful atmosphere. This peace was shattered rudely at one point by a deafening boom reverberating from the steep rocky banks of the river. Puzzled by this breach of tranquillity, we had all looked around to spot the source and, on rounding the next bend, were horrified to discover fishermen with snorkel masks pulling small, floating fish from the water. The fact that these local men were dynamite fishing in their own waters was distressing enough…the more so when you consider that the fish they were catching were no more than 4 inches long. Sustainability and stock management are obviously not words that these guys would understand so you can hardly blame them for their actions but I would hate to be them trying to catch fish next year. Education against this type of destructive behaviour seems to be the one element missing in many South East Asian cultures and is surely something that Western governments and NGOs should be investing in heavily if they wish the local populaces to attain sustainable independence.
This aside, it was a beautiful day and an excellent way to cover the miles to Vientiane. Once there, I hooked up with a pleasant American called Jon from the other kayaking party and he helped me find a very nice hotel room – necessary before my 5.30 am departure to the airport. Of course, the added benefit of his excellent company was an evening spent in the vicinity of Hesther. Unfortunately, with an early-morning departure, the remains of my hangover and my advanced years, there was little chance of me partying the Vientiane night away. I reluctantly made my weary way to bed just after midnight. I had no regrets about seeing virtually nothing of Vientiane. Cities aren’t my favourite places and I was intent on spending my time more pleasantly in the lazy, southern reaches of the Mekong.
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