Laos forum

I think the Li Phi rapids near the Lao-Cambodia border will prevent you from making the entire journey by boat. You could probably piece together large portions of the trip, but I don't think there is commercial (or at least regularly scheduled) boat transport along much of the river these days.

The Mekong can be wide and shallow, and big sections are littered with rocks. Even along the places where regular boat transport is available, like the section north of Luang Prabang, you hear about boats crashing into the rocks fairly often.

My last time on the river was in January 2010 on a boat heading upriver from Champasak to Pakse. The boat hit a rock and bent the propeller, and for awhile it looked like the only two passengers, a really nice dutch girl and me, were going swimming. Luckily the tide and the boatman pushed us towards the bank.

Time of year makes a big difference too, as the river depth changes over the seasons. Cheers.

As noted, there are a number of factors which keep the Mekong from fulfilling the wanderlust Tom Sawyer dreams. In dry season sections of it are difficult or impossible to navigate, there are "white water" sections such as the Khone Phapheng Falls http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khon_Phapheng_Falls in southern Laos, and improved roads have facilitated faster cheaper transport alternatives (boat transport has simultaneously faded away). There are also political/legal implecations, for example the Mekong forms the border between Thailand and Laos for hundreds of kms, so as a foreign passenger you could be in trouble for landing on the wrong side without going through the proper Immigration channels. I've taken a cargo boat down from Jinghong in Yunnan China to Chiang Saen in Thailand but now it is increasingly regulated in favour of package-deal tourist boats. I've seen others try to take a simple boat down the Mekong by themselves with limited success. A friend of mine didn't even make it a day without crashing on rocks and ruining his primitive craft. See before and after pics where the raft became inoperable.

The before and after Pics look exactly the same to me.

OK my pics were not dramatic enough to illustrate the point. They hit rocks which destroyed one end of the bamboo poles and had to chop them off and effectively left the buoancy insufficient. What the guy took away from this (after one night stranded on an island then being "rescued" next day by a fisherman) is you really need a motor in order to fight the currents sometimes, and their design wasn't robust enough to withstand the forces of the river.

I previously posted photos of a slightly better raft built by 3 Italians I met in Huay Xai, but unfortunately I didn't find out if they succeeded or how far they even got, but at least it looked thoughtfully-conceived (except for sun cover which they didn't seem to care about).

Bob, that thing isn't big enough to sail in a fish pond, let alone the Mekong.

"Very Thor Heyerdahl-ish.
Love that kind of stuff"

Me too - at least enough to go see the Kon Tiki in Oslo a few months after his death.