The boat trip up the Mekong just about finished me off.
I left Luang Prabang with a sore throat and arrived in Houixei with no voice at all and a cough like a machine gun that kept me awake all night. Too tired to move on I took everything that the local chemist had to offer, which wasn't much. A few strepsyls that tasted like they had been made locally using the Mekong river weed and left the roof of my mouth raw, some tablets that advertised themselves as cough suppressants and expectorants, but had hardly any effect at all - probably because they had been in the chemist shop for ages in the heat. The 'chemist' in this one-horse town is run by a little school girl most of the time, who dishes out antibiotics and anything else that anyone wants and takes the money. They did warn me that there is no health service in Laos.
So after four days of coughing and having no voice I'd had enough. And I'd finished most of my reading material. There is one book exchange here. I can see why people left the books that they did, but I can't understand why they bought any of them in the first place. Finding nothing that I would remotely consider reading, I decided against leaving my (quite good) books here. I will haul them with me, to Thailand.
So tomorrow morning I set off on foot down to the river, to cross over to Thailand on the other side.
Then I must catch a tuk tuk to the bus station and find a bus to Chang Rai, where I have decided to go, because it has a hospital but it's less polluted than Chang Mai. It might be a bit of a challenge finding the bus to Chang Rai with no voice! I can't read the Thai alphabet.
So all my plans to travel to the north of Lao have come to nothing. I'm leaving the country ten days before my visa expires, but the best made plans . . .and all that.
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