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NoorderSoft's two owners, Peter Feenstra and Hans Kouwenberg, have travelled South East Asia several times before. During their last visits, in January 2003 and January 2005, they came across the Mekong River (Mae Khong River in Thai) in various places in Thailand and Laos, and they found out that waterborne transport is indeed existing on the Mekong - be it on an altogether totally different scale than we know in Europe.
During
the planning of the next trip to the area, an idea was born: why not try and
follow a large part of the river's course and see if the expertise that earns
us our money in Europe could be made of use in Asia too, to the local
communities..... Without pretending to know more about their possibilities and
logistics than they do themselves, it would be interesting to investigate IF
and HOW our European expertise can help to improve their infrastructure and to
contribute to their development.
Considering that 60 of the 240 Million people that inhabit Southern China, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodja and Vietnam are living in the Mekong basin, and that their wealth status is well below ours ($ 265 yearly GDP in Cambodja, for example!), the idea of being able to contribute is at least a sympathetic one. Whether or not it is POSSIBLE to contribute remains to be seen, but we found the thought challenging enough to give it a try...
So we began to browse around on the internet and we found out that we were NOT the first to have this idea: with support of a.o. the World Bank and similar institutions, an organisation called The Mekong River Commission - analogue to the Rhine and Danube Commissions in Europe - tries to coordinate the various aspects of the river management (like environmental management, navigation, flood control). When we contacted the Mekong River Commission management, we first got an enthousiastic response to our curious questions, but when we suggested that the commission might assist us with the dreary process of applying for visa and letters of recommendation, the enthusiasm quickly faded away.... We decided to continue our idea in a much less "official" and "formal" way, also because it did not seem likely that we would get access to inland navigation people through this commission (just as one wouldn't try to approach a Rhine skipper through the CCNR).
In the
preparation of our January 2006 trip we had originally planned to incorporate
many sandy beaches, sea side resorts and city trips throughout Cambodja and
Vietnam. But gradually, as this new idea took shape, more and more beaches were
replaced by more and more stretches of Mekong River and more and more inland
ports and harbours. Finally, we simply decided to follow the river from south
to north, crossing Cambodja and Laos along a route that not many people have
travelled..... This choice made some major amendments of our original travel
plans necessary: first of all our means of transport had to be changed. A
standard Toyota wouldn't get very far on the muddy banks of the river, so a
four wheel drive was required. We found that our "traditional" car rental
company in Vientiane (Asia Vehicle
Rental) could provide us with a vehicle that is suitable for the kind of
dust roads we'll have to travel AND that is allowed into all four of the
countries we'll have to cross....
A second change involved our standards of comfort: one can hardly expect to find 4 or 5 star hotels in cities as famous as "Stung Treng", "Takhaek" or "The 1000 Islands", so we decided we'll have to get our hernia's and aching limbs used to bamboo mats instead. The third change has to do with the "ease" of international travel between those countries: contrarily to a border passage between even the least comfortable borders in Europe, crossing from one country to another can be downright impossible in South East Asia, even if there is a road across the border. To give an indication: between Viet Nam, Cambodja and Laos there are altogether THREE border posts which may be passed by foreigners, two between Viet Nam and Cambodja (one of which is coincidentally located along the Mekong River) and only ONE between Cambodja and Laos (not too far from the river either). The latter border crossing requires previous arrangements for passage, because no border documents can be provided on the spot. This simple fact forces us to seek some help from our network of inland river navigation experts: we will have to ask for some sort of recommendation in order to convince the Lao and Cambodian governments that the passage at that particular spot is vital for the success of our voyage..... The only other option would be to leave the Mekong river at Stung Treng, drive back for about five days to Ho Chi Minh City, then all the way north to Dan Nang, cross the Vietnamese-Lao border at Lao Bao and drive back south to the river at the border again. The detour would be about TWO full weeks of continuous driving!
A last idea was, to invite other experts, specialists and knowledgeable people from our inland waterways expertise network, to support and assist us with THEIR respective expertises. Imagine we'd come across a need for Inland ECDIS ENC's in a certain stretch of the Mekong River. It's not unlikely, in view of the fact that sea-river container transport is already organised in Viet Nam and that someone is reviewing the possibilities of improving night navigation on certain stretches of the river. What would be more fantastic than to be able to offer the help and expertise of the leading European ENC-specialists...?
Slowly, our plans and arrangements unfolded. We
prepared everything that had to be prearranged, and on January the 5th we
pulled the NoorderSoft office doors behind us and - shivering because we did
not want to take any heavy clothes - made our way to Amsterdam Schiphol
Airport....