We were very excited to take a boat as our means of transportation rather than another bus. It was awesome as we could enjoy the sun and wind instead of broken air conditioning and a smelly bus.The boat was an old long boat with van vehicle seats as seating! So innovative! (made us think of Joe Bayda) Haha . The 9 hours up the Mekong river was beautiful with amazing landscape and many villagers fishing, washing clothes, sifting rice, and carrying on their daily lives on the riverside.
We arrived in Pakbeng, a tiny one-strip town, just after sunset, and were only there to catch the next boat in the morning to the Laos-Thailand boarder. Pakbeng was unlisted in our Lonely Planet Book and had virtually nothing about it on Trip Advisor so we knew we going somewhere small and literally off the map, but we wanted to try something different from the bus so we thought it would be a good adventure.
After we arrived we got a hotel room at the one of two hotels in town. We were low on money and needed to pull money out from the ATM before we could find some dinner. Asking locals to direct us to an ATM, we got all the same answers, "No ATM, no bank." Wait..What do you mean no ATM or bank? We laughed at first.. we have no money..
We wanted to believe the locals just didn't understand what we were asking but they did, and there was no ATM or bank. The closest one was over two hours away. Initially shocked, then a little panicked and stressed, we scrounged up whatever we could find in our bags and pockets and together came up with $6.
We had $6 to feed the two of us and it wasn't even close enough to buy us our boats tickets out of Pakbeng to the Loas-Thai boarder in the morning. Upon that realization, we were a bit stressed. What the heck were we going to do!? I considered trying to sell my iPod or something haha. A really sweet local man saw us trying to figure out what to do and suggested that we could trade our passports with the boats men and then pay them on the other end when there was an ATM. We crossed our fingers that that it was going to work and then made a plan to budget our $6 for three meals and drinking water between the two of us.
We budgeted dinner down to $1 each for some sandwiches and bought a small bunch of bananas for 30 cents. For the rest of the night we didn't know what to do. It was a really scary feeling of having almost no money. We thought it would be a good idea to make it an early night in because we wanted to conserve our energy since we didn't eat much and knew we wouldn't be for probably the next 24 hours.
It was feeling unlike any other that night. If we were broke at home we could at least hang out around the house or at a friends house. If you're hungry there will be something in the fridge or you can go to someone's house for dinner... But we were in the middle of no where with no money. In the moment we both felt a little homesick, but more incredibly grateful for our friends, family and full fridges at home. We were so lucky that we just had enough to get a room to sleep in, but if we would of had any less, we would have been sleeping outside, homeless for a night. It was incredibly eye opening to imagine how a mother or father must feel when they honestly just do not have money to feed their children. In North America, I don't know if we really have an actual grasp on this concept. Having no money. None. No loans to get by, no friends to borrow from.. Just no money anywhere. My heart broke as I really thought about that. Jeremy and I at least already ate two full meals earlier that day. And we knew we'd see food and money again the next day when we got to the ATM... But to really have absolutely no money, struggling to day to day.. It's so hard to understand that that is reality for people. Heart breaking.
In the morning we shared a really small breakfast and bought some cheap fruit and sandwiches for our lunch on the boat. Our last very 30 cents went towards a bottle of water. We were surprised with ourselves when at breakfast the table next to us left some food behind on their plates and the both of us truthfully considered eating it! We also questioned whether or not to ask the bakery how much it would be to buy some of their day old buns from them! It was very humbling, especially when we had to ask the boats men if we could pay on the other side since we had no money. They agreed upon us giving up our passports. It was such a relief to know we were on the boat and heading to the boarder, and an ATM.
-Kendal
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