Day 80 - Our first impression of Luang Prabang, even though it was dark and quiet, was that is was brilliant. The place was lit up by fairy lights and had a real French feel to it. As it was so quiet and there were many people on our boat trip, we had a bit of trouble of finding accommodation. Eventually we found somewhere not too far from the main road where all of the restaurants and bars were. Once settled we went for a lovely meal along the boulevard...

Day 79 - Wahoo!! Our trip to Laos starts today, bye bye Thailand we will miss you! We had an early start, the next two days we were to spend on a slow boat sailing up the Mekong River until we eventually reach Laos. I imagined that the boat would be a little more extravagant than it actually was, you know a bit like the QE2 cruise ship or something, it turned out to be a wooden barge with wooden benches to sit on and that's it! All part of the fun thou...

Day 87 - We arrived in Pakse at about 6am. Our first impressions of the place was 'oh god'! It was rather a dump, very smelly and dusty. We had high hopes though and were not put off by this. We headed to a guesthouse that the Lonely Planet had recommended. Once at the guesthouse, we were taken to a nice, clean, commodious room and as it was still on about 6:30am we went back to bed for a couple of hours! We rose mid-morning and went out in search for fo...