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Mekong River update: Unexpected company and the Khone Falls

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Full dispatches

Oct 6, 2004 21: 05 EST
Published Sep 22, 2004 12: 33 EST
Mick is currently paddling the middle river, and has posted another (lengthy) update: Here a skinny version, full dispatch on Wetdawg.

"As I approached the international border checkpoint at Jinghong I was made aware that another bunch of foreigners had just paddled through the previous day. It was a team of New Zealanders who had also been undertaking a first descent of the Mekong valley by mountain bike, foot and kayak.

As far as I know their expedition and my own are the only two attempts to explore the entire Mekong valley since the failed French Mekong Expedition in 1866. I find it incredible that after well over a hundred years since the French were forced to cancel their expedition near Dali in Yunnan that the next two attempts are undertaken simultaneously!

King Cobra

I crossed into Laos and paddled down long sections of swirly rapids until I noticed that what originally appeared to be a stick swaying in the current was actually a king cobra attempting to swim across the Mekong.

While getting my camera out I took my eye off the eight ball for a couple of moments and before I knew it I was inadvertently sucked into a whirlpool with him. He disappeared under the boat and there was a tense couple of seconds as I waited to see where he would pop up.

I saw his tail flick just to the right of my kayak and he was gone again as the whirlpool spun me around. To be bitten by a king cobra in remote country such as this would almost certainly be fatal so I kept my elbows up high and my paddle at the ready to fend the snake off should he try to attack.

Lao Village

I camped in a small rural Lao village that night and swapped stories by candle light with the bemused locals, who could hardly believe that I had paddled down from Tibet or that I could speak Lao to boot.

The next day I bumped into the New Zealanders. They were a great bunch of people and we spent hours swapping stories and experiences from the upper Mekong. Like my trip, their expedition had been plagued by unforeseen problems.

They had spent three full weeks in Jinghong attempting to get their imported kayaks out of customs and sorting out permits to cross by kayak into Laos. To their distress they were also forced to leave the Mekong Valley through much of the Tibetan section because the roads that they were told were bike-able through the area did not exist.

Laos and Thailand

We crossed into Thailand at Chiang Saen to pick up the newest member of the team Hutch Brown from Maine, USA. Along with another two cameras and a hunger to explore the Mekong basin Hutch also brought new sea kayaks sponsored by Feel Free Kayaks and arranged by Admotive Thailand, making our expedition far more efficient. You guys rock!

Over the following week we crept down the Mekong as it made a lengthy detour into Laos.

I lost Brian and Hutch for a couple of days when the zodiac they were using had engine troubles and finally met them in the riverside capital of Laos, Vientiane. More of an oversized town than a city Vientiane provided the base from which we rested up and arranged various interviews and meetings for the documentary before again crossing into Thailand.

We also attended a small press conference where we met Thailand’s most famous and intrepid paddler, Mr Rattapoom Youprom or "Thong" as he preferred to be called.

Thong's story

Thong had just finished his own amazing 3000 kilometer solo journey across the entire coastline of Thailand unsupported. As soon as he heard about a solo navigation of the Mekong River, Thong knew he had to come and join us for a while. The longer I knew Thong and the more his life story unfolded as we paddled south between Laos and Thailand the more I came to respect this incredible man.

Thong’s expedition was inspired by a great need to come to peace with himself after a life altering experience shattered his world. Thong’s mother and nephew were brutally murdered by a contract killer who hit the wrong targets. In a strange twist the assassin turned out to be a former childhood friend of Thong’s who had turned to a life of drugs and crime. Thong was initially consumed with hate, pain and a desire for revenge and knew that these emotions would eat him up from inside and or lead to a life behind bars if he carried out his bitter plans.

His answer was to leave the world behind and take to the ocean in a bid to save his sanity and his soul. For seven months he paddled unsupported along the Thai coastline living as a sea gypsy and in true Buddhist style lived off the generosity of local people who believe they gain merit for the next life through helping others on their quest for inner peace.

Thong was forced to leave us after just one week after a relative passed away and we bade him farewell at the border town of Nakhon Phanom.

The Four Thousand Islands

Finally we made it down to one of the most amazing parts of the Mekong called the Four Thousand Islands. At this point the Mekong braids out into various channels that make up a unique seasonal wetland habitat that can only be found in a select few places on earth such as the Amazon basin. Just before the river crosses into Cambodia at a breadth of 12 kilometers it tumbles off a fault line some 10 meters deep. Khone Falls is not as high as Niagara or Victoria falls in Africa but it does have more water tumbling off it, making it an impressive sight at any time of year.

The falls presented the last major navigational barrier for the Mekong First Descent Project. On previous paddle trips to the falls I had located and navigated various challenging class 5 runs down the fault line but with a tight schedule to keep and with people waiting for us just downstream in Cambodia I was forced to semi portage the locally famous Liphi Falls (A central channel of the Khone Falls) after scouting two unviable channels and simply running out of time.

This was particularly frustrating as I knew that if we only had a half a day or so available to scout alternative routes then I would definitely be able to run the drop as part of the Mekong descent but I guess it was not meant to be on this trip and at least it was a section that I had previously run.

And so ended the middle Mekong section of the descent through Laos, Thailand and Myanmar. It would take weeks of writing to really go into all of the captivating moments which made the stretch so special but for now that can wait. It would suffice to say that the middle Mekong surpassed my expectations and inspired me in countless ways. It doesn’t get better than this!

The Mekong is one of the world's major rivers. It is the 12th longest in the world, and the 10th largest by volume. From Tibet it runs through China, Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. The extreme seasonal variations in flow and the presence of rapids and waterfalls have made navigation extremely difficult.

The river's source, is uncertain, due to the existence of several tributaries in an inaccessible environment. Chinese researchers believe that the source is located in the Jifu Mountains in Zaduo County, Yushu Tibet Autonomous Prefecture of northwest China's Qinghai Province, which is some 5,200 meters above sea level. An earlier expedition, led by Michel Peissel, placed the source at the head of the Rupsa-La pass (further west, at an altitude of 4975 meters).

Approximately half the river's length is in Tibet and China. Much of this stretch consists of deep gorges, and the river leaves China at an altitude of only 500 meters.

The river next forms the border between Myanmar and Thailand for 200 km, at the end of which it meets the tributary Ruak River at the Golden Triangle. This point also marks the division between the Upper and Lower Mekong.

The river then divides Laos and Thailand, before a stretch passing through Laos alone. The Lao stretch is characterised by gorges, rapids and depths of as little as half a meter in the dry season. It widens south of Luang Prabang, where it has been known to flood to 4 km in width and 100 meters in depth, although its course remains extremely inconsistent. The falls are all but impassable to river traffic. In Cambodia, the Sambor rapids are the last to impede navigation, before the river ends in Vietnam.

Members of the French Mekong Expedition of 1866 ascended the river from its mouth to Yunnan between 1866 to 1868. Their chief finding was that the Mekong had too many falls and rapids to ever be useful for navigation.

The Mekong flows North to South for over 3,000 miles, passing by dozens of different ecological biomes from the Polar Desert of the Tibetan Plateau through Pine forest, Tropical Evergreen Rainforest to the marshes and mangroves of the Delta. The Mekong Basin has a biodiversity as rich as the Amazon’s. the river system boasts an estimated 1,300 different species of fish. Mega Fauna include endangered Irrawaddy Dolphins, Crocodiles, Snow Leopards, Clouded Leopards, Tigers, Sun Bear and Asian Elephant.

The two most controversial current issues are the building of dams and the blasting of rapids.

Mick is a co-founder of Wildside Eco-Tourism Company and a pioneer of paddle sports and eco-tourism in several countries of East Asia. Mick began toying with the concept of paddling the entire Mekong River after navigating several un-boated sections of the river in Laos and Cambodia in 2000/2001.

Image of Mick negotiating the 4,000 Islands Courtesy of Mick O'Shea/Wetdawg.com

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