Pak Beng After Dark...

Pak Beng, Laos

July 22, 2007
N 19°53.565
E 101°07.783

We discovered Pak Beng is a completely different town at night. Since it’s a major overnight stopping point for many local and tourist boats making their way up or down the Mekong the population seems to nearly double in the evenings. When we arrived, the only tourists in the town were us and a couple from England who dared to make the trip on the sawngthaew with us to Pak Beng.

Thinking we were still the only tourists in town we didn’t head out until 8:00 PM; figuring we could have our pick of any table at any restaurant along the street. However, we were surprised to find the streets lined with tourists wandering from restaurant, laughing and drinking Lao-Lao, or just relaxing on a patio sipping Beer Lao.

After a short stroll along Main Street we decided to give the one and only Indian restaurant in town a try. We had to sit off the street, inside the restaurant, since it was nearly full of diners; hindering any of the rare cool breeze from reaching us on the humid night.

After enjoying the Indian cuisine we headed back to our guesthouse, admired the views of the Mekong from the balcony and headed off to catch some sleep after another long travel day.

We woke around 9:00 AM and headed out to check out the town a little more and have our first cup of coffee in at least five days. The streets were again empty, all the tourists, including the English couple, departed on one of the boats that left in the morning to either Luang Prabang or Huay Xai (the border crossing into Thailand).

Lucky for us, we had the whole town to ourselves again, and plenty of time to explore the dusty, yet picturesque, river town.