On the slow boat down the Mekong

Today is day 2 on the slow boat from Huayxay to Luang Prabang. We stopped in Pakbeng yesterday, to spend the night there, and after they squeezed every person that was waiting on the pier onto the boat, everyone was truly relieved when we got to our stopover destination after 5 1/2 hours on the water. Luckily, I was on the boat pretty early and therefore, got a fairly good seat. Other people weren’t so lucky and had to sit next to the engine because the captain refused to take a second boat which caused a little irritation among some of the passengers.. But we made it anyway and Pakbeng actually turned out to be a pretty nice place with cute little restaurants and rooms. Nothing really special but good enough for one night. Since I am by myself right now and somehow, only hung out with couples lately, I needed to find some people to share a room with in order to safe some money. I managed to do so and met Sarah and Tyler from The States. Together we found a really good deal and only paid 25.000 Kip (which is about 2,70€) each for the night in a three-bed room. After walking around for a little while, we had dinner at a nice little family run place with some people from Sarah and Tyler’s group and to our surprise, got a free tequila shot (it basically just tasted like some kinda distilled alcohol, but oh well it was for free..) from the owner of the restaurant. Chances are though, he’s not gonna stay in that position for long. While he seemed to be a little confused the entire time (maybe he’d had the rest of the bottle before we came), his little 8 year old daughter took our orders and delivered the request to her mom. This young lady is probably going to take over the business soon and hopefully, she’ll also help out her mom. She was cooking in the kitchen and was, apparently, doing that all by herself because the food got to our table one by one, about 20 minutes apart. We enjoyed our meal anyway, and went to bed pretty early. I think I’m stuck in that treehouse rhythm now.
This morning, we got to the pier at 8am and left around 9am and we finally got a second boat! So now, we’ve been on the water for 6 1/2 hours and honestly, I’m ready to get to Luang Prabang because my headache from the cold that I caught on the second night in the treehouse is really killing me. I truly hope it’s not going to be the 9 hours they announced yesterday.