Lewis and Clark and Dingley and Nervig

Today I went a bit north of Vientiane to the Nam Ngum river (where the floating restaurant is) with my friend John Dingley, Chief Technical Advisor to UXO Lao and his friend Alistair, who served in the British military with him and now is the proud owner of Sea King Divers in Phuket, Thailand. John recently bought a 12 foot zodiac with a 30 hp motor, and we put it in the river about 30 KM past the floating restaurant.


















We put the boat in and headed north on the river about an hour or so, then stopped off at a little riverside restaurant that had it's own little fish farm, so, you know, fresh fish. I made the mistake of telling the proprietress where I worked, and she gave me her sister's visa horror story. Her sister just wanted to go visit their other sister in California but she didn't get a visa. Sure, her other sister had gone there on a tourist visa and stayed illegally, finally marrying an American, and her parents had gone three years ago on tourist visas and were still there, but really, why couldn't SHE go?

John was nice enough to let me drive the boat.



















After lunch, we headed further upriver about 4 KM until we hit the Nam Ngum dam. Not often you get to see the dam from this point of view, I guess. We had to go through some minor rapids, which gave John some minor heartburn as it is a new motor, but we made it through fine. On the way back downriver, we turned of the motor and floated for a while, paddling every now and again to get us through the rougher water.

Captain John at the helm with the dam in the background.