To buy, or not to buy?

Invariably a traveler will wish to purchase something besides sunscreen, mosquito repellent, toothpaste or another bar of soap – a local trinket, a bit of hand-woven cloth, or perhaps a pair of baggy fisherman's pants one would never wear on the streets back home. Invariably this will involve haggling, which can be an entertaining activity in itself. My tactic has been to counter an original price with a ridiculously low price, which usually gets a laugh, at which point the soon-to-be-agreed-upon price rises incrementally to a number both parties are happy with. And remember: in Asia, one can haggle for just about anything.

But invariably a traveler will also simply wish to admire, to entertain the notion of buying something: a scarf, a wooden box, a strand of handcrafted silver. This is where trouble can brew, feelings can be hurt and consumer guilt can set in.

Below is a breakdown of how much one is committing to a purchase based on one's actions in a market stall or an established shop. These numbers are not set in stone, but if followed roughly may make for a more pleasant purchasing – or non-purchasing – experience.

Note: These rules do not apply to department stores in big cities or the ubiquitous 7-11s.

1. If one does not wish to enter into any sort of capitalist intercourse while walking through town, one would do best to simple keep one's eyes on the road – even looking at an object from the sidewalk can pre-commit one at least 5 percent to a purchase, depending on the type of look given to said object.

2. Pointing to an object immediately brings one at least 15 percent into a potential purchase; actually picking it up can add 20 to 30 percent more.

3. Asking the price of an item takes one well into the 50 percent committal range, particularly if one asks if there is a similar item but in a different style – "Same same, but different?"

4. Trying the item on, discussing its merits with a companion or in any way showing sustained interest in the item continues to raise your percentage of commitment. If one finds oneself at this stage in the exchange, one is probably at least 75 percent of the way to paying for the item.

5. Once one has begun to haggle it becomes nearly impossible to extricate oneself from the purchase. By this point the store owner or stall vendor has no doubt already offered at least two prices that are lower than the original price and is just as committed to getting you to purchase then item as you are to not buying it.

6. Only through tactful and appeasing excuses can one actually hope to now walk away from the exchange without buying the item. However, this is also the point at which the seller is most willing to strike a deal and often by beginning to walk away the price will come down even more and the item may very well be had for less than half of its asking price. Commitment: 90 percent.

7. If one manages to get a good price, well done. Be happy with your well-haggled purchase and feel more confident in approaching your next shop. But if one was never intent on buying anything in the first place, and has left a frustrated vendor calling after with a lower price still, then don't feel guilty. But understand what one has just gone through, know that your kip or baht is aggressively sought after, and be a little wiser with the local wares.

Sunset on the Mekong River. This is the photo that made the whole two-day trip from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang – the hundreds of farang, the ever-present drone of the boat's engine, the unyielding hardness of its wooden floor – absolutely, incredibly and amazingly worth it.

My (two-day) life on the Mekong

The two-day slow boat ride to Luang Prabang, Laos, began with a short ferry ride from Chang Khong, Thailand, a quiet strip of guesthouses and restaurants nestled against the banks of the Mekong River about a six-hour bus ride north of Chiang Mai.

The bus ride north was tolerable, the twisting monotonous span of road cut across terraced fields and through wide canyons while Thai music videos – fraught with heartache – played on an old television strapped into a small shelf at the front of the bus.

After pulling into Chang Khong just as dark was settling on the one-lane town, I checked into an immaculate guesthouse drowning in teak furniture and Thai artifacts, overlooking the placid expanse of the river. Across the main road, the guesthouse's restaurant offered bowls of red and green curries – chunks of turnip, tomato and onion swimming in a spicy broth – that was welcome nourishment after a day spent eating hot-chili-squid-flavored chips and drinking green Thai soda.

In the morning, the guesthouse owner's brother expedited our visa process – a few stamps and some signatures at a restaurant down the road – and dropped us at the ferry pier. A dozen farang piled into a sliver of a boat, which sliced its way across the glassy water, landing on the Laos side of the border.

The immigration process in Huay Xai – the Laos town opposite the river from Chang Khong – lacked any semblance of order. Scrambled herds of farang clambered about on a concrete platform, filling out visa forms and moving from one undermanned window to another. Our expedited visas didn't clear any hurdles for us; all the farang seemed bound by the same innocuous-but-time-consuming red tape. But according to one, a tanned and wrinkled man from England, this Laos immigration checkpoint was an exemplar of bureaucracy: he had recently come from Tibet where, he told me, the immigration official at the border had to be woken from a nap, whereupon the farang was led to a line of hundreds of other border crossers and spent most of the day waiting in queue.

The plain hulk of the slow boat – a 12-foot-wide, 45-foot long, shallow, covered craft – left the Huay Xai pier at 12 p.m. An incredibly loud, massive engine puttered the oversized raft downstream along compacted sand beaches and thick-with-green banks, while pillars of smoke from rubbish fires dissipated in the thickening haze. The mountainous terrain of Laos rose up steadily, like unfolding layers of a fan, while water buffalo lazed in the sun, barely lifting the heads as the slow boat droned along the muddy, sweet-smelling drift.

The young crew – a cluster of smiling boat boys – traded off tending a small cooking fire on the back deck – blackened pots scattered about, cooking utensils hanging from crudely fashioned hooks. A canister of a dozen brightly colored toothbrushes hung to the left of the back doorway across from a line of drying laundry. Farangs lounged with books or playing cards or – for those who showed up to the pier with last night's beer in hand – slept on a thin straw mat at the center of the boat. Two hill tribe women across from my bench also napped – one against the crook of her hand, the other against the blue-railed sideboard of the boat.

Jutting worn rock crept from around the jungled maws of the river's bends, while a jovial young Laos man in a military-green jacket and a red bombardier's scarf steered the boat. The skeletal remains of drooping bamboo poles – fishing nets strung like cobwebs – lodged in the multicolored limestone rising up from the brown water. Small children on the banks stood in the shallow lees, framed by white crumbling beachhead now exposed in the dry season – the river halved by the heat – and compacted by layers of animal blood, plant ash and the plodding insistence of history.

An imposing limestone cliff – or karst – shoots up from the banks of a small tributary along the Mekong River.

At a midpoint stop on the second day, a boy broods from his rocky perch on the banks above the slow boat.

Rock perchers on the second day of the slow boat ride to Luang Prabang. The presence of stoic locals along the Mekong's banks added to the mystical vibe of this ancient river.

A hazy mist obscures Laotian hillsides and the next bend in the lazy and quiet Mekong River.

At a stop along the Mekong River, a woman holds out some kind of muskrat – freshly killed – for one of the boat workers to bring aboard, which grosses out the farangs, doesn't phase the old locals, and delights the boat boys, who seem to get a kick out of startling travelers with local customs.

Laos coffee from the guesthouse in Pak Beng. This stuff was so strong it leeched into the sides of my mug and, even after a healthy dose of condensed milk and two artificial creamers, was the color of crude oil.

Early morning in Pak Beng looking downriver. This small village is little more than a cluster of guesthouses high up on the banks of the Mekong River. The generators here thrummed loudly until midnight, when they were abruptly shut off and I was left to listen to round robin of roosters cockling in the pitch black.

Girls attempt make their out to the edge of a rocky outcropping to sell fabric to slow boat riders at a small stop along the Mekong River.

Another slow boat passes ours near at a dock near a small village somewhere between Pak Beng and Luang Prabang.

The sandy, muddy banks of the Mekong River.

More sleepers in the back of the slow boat. Even five feet from the grinding roll of the boat's engine, these farangs and locals were still able to catch a few winks.

A boy perches on the prow of a neighboring slow boat at one of the many stops along the Mekong River.

People didn't need much to fall asleep on the slow boat. This young man spent most of both days on the river propped up in this position, apparently able to drown out the knocking drone of the boat's gigantic engine.

A reader finds respite on the back deck of the slow boat.

People made do wherever they could on the slow boat – leaning against backpacks or lying prone in the middle of the boat – anything to finish the next chapter in that coveted novel.

A man smokes a cigarette on a spot on the floor at the front of the slow boat. When he got on the boat at a midpoint, he began by sitting on one corner of a farang's inflatable mat, but by the end of the trip on the second day he occupied nearly half of the the farang's cushy seat and didn't seem to notice – or care – if he was intruding.

Limestone rocks, normally covered in the rainy season, rise up out of the muddy calm of the Mekong River. Any feature of the landscape more than a couple hundred yards away is obscured by the ever-present haze.