I chose the "speed boat"

LUANG PRABANG, Laos — Traveling brings with it a host of tough decisions: the cheap hotel or the expensive one? Stay another night or move on? Bus or plane? Purified or tap water? Museum or temple? Beer or mixed-drink? Taxi or walk? Blond or brunette? Good travelers make these decisions instantly to keep everything moving; bad travelers get bogged-down trying to decide. This is why traveling with others can be so difficult — people spend too much time arguing and not enough time traveling.

Instead of catching my scheduled flight back to the U.S. this morning (why return to your home country when you can visit a new country?), I decided to make the journey to Laos, the country bordering eastern Thailand, and visit Luang Prabang, one of the most remote cities in Southeast Asia and the religious and artistic capital of Laos. To accomplish this feat, I had to do the following: 1) get a visa exit stamp from a Thai official, 2) take a ferry across the Mekong River from tiny Chiang Khong to tinier Huay Xai, 3) buy a Laos tourist visa from a Lao official, 4) travel 300-km southeast down the Mekong River, arriving in Luang Prabang.

At this point, I was presented with a difficult decision: "slow boat" or "speed boat"?

Taking the "slow boat" costs 206,950 Lao Kip (about $20 US) and takes more than twelve hours over the course of two days, with an overnight stop in town Pakbeng. Seats in the "slow boat" are more comfortable than in the "speed boat," but the slow boats often become overcrowded with additional cargo.

The "speed boat" costs 336,298 Kip (about $33 US) and takes about seven hours, including a one-hour lunch break. These boats are the size of a thin canoe, and each passenger sits in small compartments divided by wooden boards. While these boats have fast engines, the engines are deafeningly loud, and the boats are prone to capsize at high speeds.

The backpackers in Huay Xai hotly debated this topic. In the common backpacker spirit of "I'm so much more hard-core than you," some scoffed at the idea of taking the fast boats, suggesting that fast boats are not the "real" way to travel to Luang Prabang. Others (like me) thought that more than twelve hours on a river (or on any mode of transportation) was more than they were ready to handle.

I chose the "speed boat."

I was already traveling on borrowed time — my flight back to the States had already left without me on it! I decided that I couldn't afford the extra day required to make the trip by "slow boat," despite the fact that Lonely Planet and Fodor's both strongly recommend the slow boats for their leisurely trips down the river and slightly more comfortable seating and better safety record.

Little did I know that my choice (and the choice of seven other passengers) included less than two square-feet of space per person (literally) to sit on the boat floor with our legs crossed, barely able to move, for six hours. After the first half hour in this position, I had decided that I wouldn't be able to make it and started imagining insane backup plans involving 300-km riverside hikes and bushels of strawberries. But slowly, I became accustomed to the arrangements by pretending that I was doing a Survivor immunity challenge and passed the time by watching the scenery, reading, and adjusting my legs a couple centimeters every so often in an attempt to get comfortable.

Thus, the first few hours passed mostly uneventfully. The Mekong River is in an exceptionally remote area of northern Laos with no roads and almost no towns; during the trip, we saw very few people: only a few fisherman and children from microscopic riverside villages. The river scenery is stunning; cliffs, crags, and forests make up the landscape — it truly feels like a boat trip out of Conrad's Heart of Darkness. Every hour or so, our driver would stop the boat on a beach without warning or explanation and spend twenty minutes "repairing" (we think that's what he was doing) the engine by seemingly randomly removing parts and making adjustments with a machete. Yes, that's right — he used a big knife designed for clearing jungle paths to repair the engine. I had no idea that machetes were part of the standard boat-engine repair kit. Now I know.

After lunch, the driver moved us and our luggage to a new boat with a new driver (maybe that machete didn't work so well after all), and we reluctantly began the final three-hour trip toward Luang Prabang. The scenery was beautiful, and our legs and backs were screaming for help.

With a half hour remaining in our trip, our driver stopped the engine in the middle of the river. We asked him if there was a problem, and he said, "Luang Prabang." Of course, he couldn't speak English and we couldn't speak Lao. We tried to ask another Lao-speaker on the boat to help, but he was too busy applying mascara (we didn't understand it either). Our driver pulled out his cell phone (developing countries tend to have very good cell phone coverage, because it's their only communications system). We asked who he was calling, and he said, "Luang Prabang." After the call, he walked over us to the front of the boat, and with a tiny oar, he started rowing us forward. When we asked why he was rowing instead of using our machete-repaired "speed boat" engine, he said "Luang Prabang" and pointed forward. At least we knew that our destination was at the forefront of his mind.

The English-speaking passengers started floating theories. A British woman suggested that we were traveling through a "sacred area" (there appeared to be religious ruins nearby), and our driver had turned off the engine out of respect. That theory was thrown out when three boats whizzed by us as our driver kept rowing. The other American on the boat surmised that our driver had decided to treat us to a relaxing final half-hour so that we could take pictures and enjoy the scenery. He was so sure of this theory that he pulled out his marijuana supply and started rolling a joint to enjoy the final leg of the trip. I suspected that our engine had temporarily overheated, and our driver planned to row the boat forward until it cooled down. No one knew anything for sure, except that the driver really, really wanted to get to Luang Prabang, even if it meant using an oar.

Fifteen minutes later, another "speed boat" arrived and pulled up beside us. The driver of the new boat started transferring our luggage to the new boat in the middle of the river. Scenes from Deliverance flashed through my mind. After we all transferred to the new boat, we were forced back into our two-square feet of space. While I secretly suspected this new boat to be a river-pirate boat with a driver who planned to kidnap us, steal our luggage, and kill us, I had no such luck. Fifteen minutes later, we arrived on a beach in the middle of nowhere, which turned out to be the dock for Luang Prabang. Somehow, we made it.

For future reference, I recommend the "slow boat."

I love Southeast Asia — it's one of the best and most rewarding places to travel in the world. Here are five things that Southeast Asia could learn from the Western world to make it even better.

Plastic trash piles up near Huay Xai, Laos

1. The environment is key. Nowhere are the dire effects of pollution and slash-and-burn tactics more apparent than in developing countries. Cities like Bangkok, Bombay, Shanghai, and Mexico City have already become intolerable for Western tourists - the acrid, polluted air makes breathing difficult and the smell of excrement makes spending any time in the cities much less enjoyable. Most backpackers I've met already brag about not caring to visit huge cities like Bangkok because of the pollution.

Equally bad is locals' treatment of jungle areas and rainforests; locals illegally deforest national parks so that they can sell black-market teak and bamboo, and hill-tribes illegally burn hundreds of acres of forest for agriculture use. Plastic bags litter the landscape, partly because rural Thais are accustomed to disposing of pre-plastic biodegradable banana leaves and need more education about plastic's environmental effects and partly because many people simply don't care. In the end, these actions only hurt the locals themselves; most local Southeast Asian economies depend almost entirely on tourism, and without beautiful wilderness for trekking, tourists will stop spending money.

The worst part is that if only responsible governments better enforced well-designed zoning restrictions, motor vehicle standards, and wilderness-protection policies, these problems mostly could have been avoided. Fortunately, in many cases, environmental effects can be reversed, but governments should act immediately before health problems get worse and tourists skip these destinations completely. Asian governments can use U.S. policy as a boilerplate, but that's just the first step.

2. Suffocation is not service. Thais seem to think that good service is synonymous with suffocating service, when in fact the opposite is true. Southeast Asia, take a note: excellent service is invisible until the moment at which one needs it. (Side note: even some restaurants in the Western world haven't totally figured this out yet.)

Taxis: When a Westerner is walking down the street in any Southeast Asian city or town, every taxi passing by inevitably stops and begs him to take a ride. Why? Does this really result in more business? Wouldn't he have stood on a street-corner and yelled if he needed a ride? In New York City, taxis never beg customers to take a ride (quite the opposite), and they seem to have a lucrative business. Chances are that if we're walking down the sidewalk, we probably want to walk. When we need a taxi, we'll call one. I promise.

Restaurants: Yelling at Westerners to eat food as we pass restaurants doesn't make us any hungrier. We can easily see the food on tables even without you yelling at us, and since we've been traveling here for many weeks eating the same (excellent) food over and over, we know exactly what the food tastes like. When we finally do sit down to eat, standing at the table waiting for us to select an item from the menu does not make us decide any faster nor does it prompt us to order more food. When we want to eat, we'll ask for a table — and when we're ready to order, we'll call you to the table. I promise.

Street markets and clothing stores: Following us around a store, literally one foot behind, doesn't make us want to buy more clothes; mostly, it just makes us want to escape the store as soon as possible. Also, keep in mind that any given tourist is usually only interested in a subset of the available goods. Western guys don't usually want to buy rolls of textiles, so stop badgering us to do so. Western girls don't usually want to buy tasteless T-shirts with dirty jokes on them, so stop badgering them. When we want to buy clothes, we'll try them on and ask their price. I promise.

3. Tourists are smarter than you think. It's true that when tourists arrive in a new place, they don't know everything about it — but we know a lot more than we're given credit for. Have you seen those Lonely Planet guidebooks we all carry? You may be surprised to learn that the guidebooks describe, in great detail, every scam, trick, and lie that has ever been tried on or told to a Western tourist; those books also tell us how much everything should cost. Taxis: we also know where everything is in a town — even before we arrive! We understand that sometimes, you'll try to charge us a bit more than you would a local. We don't mind. But in almost all cases, when locals try to to scam or excessively overcharge savvy tourists, it's not only a waste of everyone's time, but it hurts the economy in the long run. Tourists avoid areas where locals treat them like walking ATM machines, and no one likes to give money to people that annoy him. Also, as trust degrades between tourists and locals, traveling becomes less fun and rewarding, also resulting in fewer tourists. My advice to Southeast Asia and all major tourist destinations: stop trying to scam and overcharge tourists. Instead, charge consistent, fair prices for all services and goods. In the long run, you'll make more money — I guarantee it.

4. Not all white people are rich. In fact, most aren't. We wear brand-name clothes, we look like the celebrities you see on television, and we seem to spend a lot of money — but remember, we're on vacation. Just because we're white doesn't mean we're millionaires; in fact, almost all long-term backpackers have no jobs at home and very little money in the bank. Don't get angry when we scoff at paying $8 US for a hotel room — most of the time, our balking at the high price is not a charade. Traveling is expensive — even in Southeast Asia — especially when our bank accounts are empty.

5. Westerners can't speak Thai, and you can't speak English. You think you can, but you can't. We admit we can't speak Thai, and we never bothered to learn. But please, keep that in mind. No matter how many minutes you spend trying to explain something to us in Thai, we'll never understand it. Ever. Even if you speak loudly. Also, if you try speaking English, and we can't understand, please don't become frustrated. We know you think you can speak English, but you really can't. Being able to say, "Hello," and "You like?" does not a fluency make.

See also: Three things the U.S. should learn from Southeast Asia.

Southeast Asia covers 4.5 million square kilometers and includes ten countries: Thailand, Laos, Burma (also unofficially known as Myanmar), Vietnam, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. Yet the Southeast Asian backpacker community is surprisingly compact.

One of the infamous slow boats makes its way down the Mekong

Remember Jim, the Brooklynite backpacker traveling with two Australians whom I met in western Thailand before embarking on my jungle trek? Coincidentally, I ran into him again in Luang Prabang in Laos, literally thousands of kilometers and a country away from the place I had last seen him. Happy to see a familiar face, we chatted about our travel experiences thus far, and then he dropped a bomb.

He chose the "slow boat." And he hated it.

As you may recall, I previously appealed to Without Baggage readers, strongly suggesting that if one decides to make the trip from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang via the Mekong River, he should indeed do so on the "slow boat."

Unbelievable as it may seem — despite my "speed boat" experience involving a canoe-sized boat; a deafening, machete-maintained engine; and death-defying turns and jagged, rocky water obstacles — the "speed boat" may have been the right choice after all. I'm sorry if I have done my readers a disservice.

According to Jim, the "slow boat's" seats were exceptionally uncomfortable — though I doubt they could have been worse than the (lack of) seats on the "speed boat" — and the boat was painfully crowded. He also complained vigorously about motion sickness. But the worst part, he told me, was his overnight stay in Pakbeng, the village at the journey's halfway point. Jim described the prearranged guesthouse — one actually named "Only One Night" — as a "hell hole" unlike any other he had seen during his trip. Keep in mind that most of us, Jim included, spent every night in Asia in 250 Baht ($6 US) per night guesthouses; so, when another backpacker describes a guesthouse as Jim did, you know it was bad.

Jim isn't the only one who believes that the "slow boat" was a bad choice. Another loyal Without Baggage reader, Cindy — one of my primary inspirations to backpack in Thailand — wrote me with the following succinct message:

"I took the slow boat. It was exactly the same experience [as the speed boat] except two days long. You made the right choice."

Thus, I have no choice but to recommend the "speed boat" — only because it's the least painful of the two options because the trip is half as long and requires no overnight stay in "Only One Night."

If you're sure you want to take the dramatic journey down the Mekong River but can't bear the thought of the "slow boat" ($20 US) or the "speed boat" ($33 US), there is one more option. If you have unlimited cash to burn ($221 - $331 US), you can try the LuangSay luxury boat, specifically designed for leisurely river travel. The boat cruises down the Mekong with an overnight stay in the comfortable LuangSay Lodge in Pakbeng but only leaves on specific days. I have never tried the boat so I can't vouch for it, but it might be worth a try.

If you do so, however, you'll be unable to brag that you tackled one of Southeast Asia's most painful and thrilling rites of passage: a "slow boat" or a "speed boat" down the Mekong.

While Southeast Asia has a lot to learn from the Western world, the U.S. has a lot it could learn from Asia. Here are a few developing-world cautionary tales and success stories.

Commuters wait to board the Skytrain in Bangkok

1. The environment is key. Compared to many other countries, the U.S. does a decent job controlling pollution. Even our biggest cities are surprisingly clean and have breathable air, in part due to U.S. environmental policy like the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Pollution Prevention Act, and the Oil Pollution Act. To protect our wilderness, President Woodrow Wilson signed an act in 1916 creating the impressive U.S. National Park Service — one of the U.S. government's most notable and lucid accomplishments.

Still, current U.S. environmental policy needs to be strengthened. One of George W. Bush's worst flaws is that he has an exceptionally bad environmental record. Every environmental lobbyist and interest group hates him. During his time as Texas governor, he weakened environmental policy such that Texas became the most polluted state in terms of air and water pollution; he crippled the Clean Water and Air Acts; he cut the budget for the EPA's enforcement division; he consistently favors industry over the environment, pushing for offshore drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge; his administration still denies the existence of global warming despite there being no prominent scientists who agree; he opened millions of acres of previously protected wilderness to logging and mining; and his recently-signed energy bill contained $2.6 billion in tax breaks for oil and gas companies. $2.6 billion? Couldn't that money have served the public better had we just sent it to the National Park Service? George, you're really not endearing Republicans to us swing voters.

Visiting any developing country, like those in Southeast Asia, makes it agonizingly clear that its environment is a country's single most important resource and the destruction of that environment has disastrous effects. It's difficult to fully grasp the extent of the potential problems without spending time in places where these problems are already manifest. I wish we could force George W. Bush and members of Congress to spend six months living in Mexico, Thailand, or India — it would give them a valuable perspective and each one would return with a new-found respect for environmental policy.

Sometimes, the best way to see your home clearly is to leave it.

2. An excellent public transportation infrastructure is essential. It is simply a (short) matter of time before U.S. city-traffic comes to a complete halt when there are more cars than U.S. roads can handle and gas costs $15 US per gallon. This is not far-fetched; in Amsterdam, gas currently costs $6.48 US per gallon. That's $97 just to fill up a 15-gallon tank. Already, it is literally impossible to take a drive in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Boston, or Atlanta unfettered by gridlocked traffic. Strangely, developing nations seem much more concerned about this quality-of-life problem than the U.S.

What can we learn from Southeast Asia? First, the city of Bangkok has a dreadful traffic problem. In some parts of the city, it can take over an hour to travel a distance that would normally take five minutes without traffic. Again, if U.S. politicians were forced to spend three months driving in Bangkok, they might worry more about the U.S. But more importantly, the city of Bangkok, in addition to their efficient boat-taxi system and bus system, has recently built both a subway system and a sky-train system, with much success. Traffic is still a problem, but it's getting better. The idea of owning a car in Bangkok seems ridiculous; during my visit, I could get anywhere quickly with little delay. The fact that Bangkok can manage this while the cities of Seattle and Los Angeles can't even figure out how to build a decent bus system baffles me.

If I were the U.S. president, I would make public transportation my number one priority. Doing so would solve the energy problem; it would greatly increase people's life-quality by helping them get of traffic; and it would let people spend their money on more important things than owning a car. I'd try to beef up the cross-country train infrastructure, I'd encourage states to initiate efficient public transportations projects, and I'd push large cities to limit metropolitan streets to only taxis and buses. If George W. Bush actually believed in the threats of a transportation and energy crisis, he would have started a campaign like this on his first day in office. Instead, he seems to care only about finding more oil.

3. There's no glamour in being poor — and surprisingly little glamour in being rich. It's currently en vogue for intelligent, young, (and mostly liberal) college students to scorn the pursuit of wealth in favor of a life of exciting, gritty poverty. Students talk of traveling the world with no debt and no attachments; they eschew stable salaries to "follow their dreams"; and they fantasize about the apparent excitement of living a "real" life without a financial safety-net or creature comforts.

It sounds glamorous. It isn't.

For many of these students, their idea of living a "real" life entails remaining unemployed while relying on mom and dad's financial safety-net. It's easy to be poor when "being poor" means doing no work, having an empty bank account, but then driving a BMW, living in a parent-funded apartment, and traveling the world on the cheap using dad's paycheck while sometimes being "forced" to fly to Europe to fulfill the family ski vacation "obligation."

Pay attention when you visit Southeast Asia. When you're actually poor, you live in Laos and spend 12 hours every day sitting on a dirt road in a market, begging tourists to buy your hand-made clothing. You hope to make $2 US in a day (Laos's average yearly income is $320 US per year). You live in Honduras and you eat rice and beans every day for the rest of your life. You live in Thailand, where your only source of income is the $10 US you get each day for the extra rooms in your house that you rent to backpackers. You live in Cambodia, you beg from tourists on the street, and you can't afford to go to a doctor, ever. That's what it's like to be poor.

On the flip side, being rich is overrated too. Again, pay attention when you visit Southeast Asia. Most of the people you'll meet have perfectly healthy and happy lives and live on only $2000 US per year. Most of them don't worry about making sure they have the latest Hermes handbag; they don't care that their jeans are perfectly fitted to their butts; and MTV's Laguna Beach and Fox's The OC are as foreign to them as written Thai script is to us. Then, try visiting an upscale, Western-style mall in Bangkok; the contrast — the vapid materialism reflective of Western culture — is sickening.

The wealth doesn't feel glamorous at all.

See also: Five things Southeast Asia should learn from the Western world.