A look at Laos from the Mekong: Native villages and old Buddhas

The Mekong River has changed from the days when it was a staple of the 6 o'clock news during the Vietnam War 40 years ago. The only incursions were boys doing cartwheels in the shallows and girls hawking their needlework during our two-day river cruise through Laos last January as part of a luxurious trip through Southeast Asia.
To transfer to our cruise, a private, air-conditioned car took my fiance and me from our hotel in Chiang Rai, in northernmost Thailand, to the beachhead at Chiang Khong. There we would cross the Mekong into Laos, where the tenor of our fancy trip changed.
After paying our 69 baht (about $2) to leave Thailand, we stomped through sand to climb into the bow of a river taxi, a canoe-like boat that seats a handful of passengers on low backless benches. The water, though close to the gunwale, stayed out so my luggage at my feet kept dry.
At last we exited the boats onto concrete in Houeisay, Laos, and porters came running to heft our bags. Back to our high-end trip, I thought. Alas, we tourists were herded into a room with benches, where a man took everyone's passports with no explanation.
Half an hour later the passports were returned, and we each paid the $35 visa fee to enter Laos. ATMs were missing here, but Lao people accept U.S. dollars and Thai baht.
Next, in groups of eight, we hoisted ourselves onto the backs of rickety trucks and were promised that our luggage would follow. We squeezed onto yet another narrow bench, and in 10 minutes, nearly 40 of us walked onto our comfortable 110-foot-long river barge whose benches had pads, backs and panoramic river views. Tour guides divided our group by language: English and French. All this adventure and my watch read only 8:45 a.m.
Our cruise ran down a navigable portion of the Mekong, a 2,610-mile river (about 300 miles longer than the Mississippi) that runs from China through Myanmar (formerly Burma), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Through northern Laos, the many desolate river banks hide the importance of the Mekong as a transportation route and source of food and water.
Our journey through this remote land was not an expedition but more of a lovely visual saunter. The crew retracted part of the roof to let the sun warm us as we passed rock formations and occasional orange groves. We docked on rocks to clomp over the narrow metal gangplank as the crew held each end of a bamboo pole that was our railing. From this near-jungle Hmong village, children ran down to persuade us to buy their bracelets. We climbed rough steps to where, like many villages, the homes were on stilts to avoid the monsoon's water.
Back on board, we enjoyed typical Thai-Lao fare: banana-leaf-wrapped steamed fish, chicken curry, steamed rice and vegetables. The afternoon brought convivial chatting, tea and alcoholic beverages, and lovely vistas of jungle, beaches, mountains and farmland that our guide highlighted. We also shot rapids through boulder fields, thankful for a skilled skipper and steel hull.
As the sun fell low, we docked at a lodge, built for the cruise in 1998 of teak and rosewood with 20 bungalows on a hill backed by jungle. Each room opened with shutters to views of the now misty Mekong.

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