During my 25 days in Laos I found the people here to be friendly, pleasant, polite and not too keen on ripping of tourists. In short: They are nice. I will make one exception from this generalization, though: The little fuckoff who runs the boats from Voeng Kham in Laos to Stung Treng in Cambodia.

In a speedboat the trip only takes one hour, so a reasonable price for the trip would be three to five dollars. And actually five dollars is what you pay if you come from Stung Treng to the border. Hoewever this little jerk wanted 15 USD per person for the slowboat. And when we asked about the speedboat he first said: "You cannot afford speedboat. Too expensive for you." When we asked again he said it would be 150 USD to charter the speedboat.

These prices are of course nothing but insulting. I mean, it costs less to go from Dong Kong to Luang Prabang - and that's a two days journey! Fortunately we had heard about this scam before and so went down to the boat landing to negotiate the price before getting our exit stamp out of Laos. Else we would have been completely at his mercy since you cannot get a visa on the spot at this border crossing. So we did all the usual things: Tried to reason with him, told him that we'd simply go back to Don Det or Pakse and go to Cambodia or Thailand from there etc.. He was not impressed. Well, he's done this a thousand times so why would he. What got me so mad - in addition to the price - was that he wouldn't budge. He simply was a prick. And quite a young prick at that - maybe 20 years old. I mean, normally, when you hear an outrageous price here, then you laugh and tell them: "Ha ha ha, no, no my friend, ha ha ha, way too much, ha ha ha." And then you get a more realistic offer. It's a game. But not this guy, arrogant and fat with the knowledge that you need him. At one point he even said: "Go away. I don't want to earn money today."

So we went back to the border and asked the guards there what the price should be. They said: 40 USD per boat for the speedboat with at lest four people per boat. This is also the price we had heard in Don Det though at that time that had felt overpriced to us. So we went back to him and said: "O.k., listen, we know it's supposed to be 40 Dollars for the speedboat. So let's be reasonable." But no. The lowest he would get down would be 15 USD per person on the speedboat and only four people per boat.

So I thought maybe the border guards can help us and we went back to the borderpost once more and found what must have been the commanding officer who fortunately spoke quite good english. We explained to him that we had a "communication problem" and that the people at the landing don't seem to understand us (true in a way). Of course he knew what was up and was understandably rather reluctant to get involved. In the end however he agreed to talk to the little guy - we really must have looked desperate. And it worked, too. At least it worked as well as it could. He got a price of 40 USD per boat for us. Since we were seven people that still worked out as slightly more then 11 USD per person but under the circumstances we were quite happy with this. I mean, we were not really going to go back to Don Det or even Thailand. But: What a little fucker! Well, at least I feel that we got the best possible deal and didn't simply bend over to get fucked. The next time however Ithink I will enter Cambodia through Thailand. People like that shouldn't be able to make any money at all.

Obviously I 'm not the only person who feels that way. But I think noone has gone to the lengths of one girl on the Lonely Planet Thorntree who crossed a few days after me and who was so pissed off that she actually swam across the Mekong to the Cambodian side and arranged a boat from there. Certainly more then just a little bit crazy - and I would have drowned doing it - but I like her style!