We left Chiang Mai for Laos, still feeling a little under the weather following our food poisoning. We were going to be taken to a new border crossing that would apparently take us 6 hours to reach by minivan. However by the time we had reached the border it had taken us 9 hours. When we reached the border, it was very quiet; the only people making the crossing were us and the two Canadian guys we were travelling with. It was so quiet that when we entered the office to have our passports checked the border guards on the Laos side were playing table tennis in their slippers while their mate stood there with a couple of AK47'slung over his shoulder, we may have been the only people they'd seen all day.

Having travelled to the border on nice tarmaced Thai roads, the state of the road on the Laos side was shocking, it was just a dirt track with 4 foot pot holes all over the place, to make matters worse as soon as you were behind another vehicle you couldn't see a thing due to the dust, it was unbelievable, at one point we were crossing small rivers.

We stopped for the night at a small rural village, staying in the only guesthouse there, which was pretty basic, and eating at the only restaurant which had a menu consisting of rice with vegetables, rice with pork or rice with chicken, that was it.

Next day we continued on towards Luang Prabang in the North of the country. The scenery in Laos is absolutely stunning, as it was early the fog hadn't yet burnt off and as we were high above it in the mountains, it looked amazing.

We were making the last stage of the journey by slow boat down the Mekong River; The boat was absolutely packed with locals and various types of poultry. It was a lovely day and the boat trip was fairly enjoyable for the first few hours, but by the end of the full 8 hours there were a few numb bums.

As we got off the boat there were tuk tuk drivers waiting to take people to whichever guest house they wanted to go to. We asked the guy to take us to one we had been advised to try, and he told us the price in kip. As we had no idea of the exchange rate we agreed to pay him 60,000 kip. The journey to the guest house took a full 3 minutes, and when we found out the exchange rate, we realized we had been royally ripped off, the guy must have thought it was his lucky day the b******!

It turned out that the guest house we wanted to stay in was full anyway, so we went to the one across the road, which was not that great, and for someone as paranoid about grime as Dani, it was a case of grin and bear it for a night.

Next day with Dan having decided that I was not keeping her in the style to which she is accustomed, we found a much nicer place for about 7 quid a night which had the added bonus of cable t.v.

Luang Prabang itself was really lovely, the streets are lined with French colonial building and the French influence is everywhere, with a lot of the locals speaking French as their second language and playing boules , and baguettes were sold everywhere. The whole atmosphere was very relaxing. The next day we went on a trip with the two Canadian guys Tom and Landon, to see a nearby waterfall. It was absolutely fantastic, and the various smaller falls and pools meant you could have a swim, which we did in the largest of the pools which also had a rope swing, from which Dan performed a spectacular flop into the water.

We also visited the cave of 4000 Buddha's which is along the Mekong river, which was ok if you like that sort of thing, looking at lots of Buddha.

Most of the rest of our time in Luang Prabang was spent chilling in the various restaurants along the main road, this was also due in no small part to the fact it pissed down for three days straight, and there wasn't much else to do, but it was made bearable by the fact Beer Lao is both very good and very cheap.

After spending nearly a week in Luang Prabang we decided to move south to Vang Vieng. When we arrived the whole place was obviously backpacker orientated as the main stretch was stuffed with bars and restaurants, most of which were showing Friends on rotation from the moment they opened till the time they closed, seriously it could drive you insane. First night we headed out for a few drinks and after visiting a few ended up in a bar that was hosting a pool tournament, already slightly the worse for wear, and with Dan encouraging me I entered, and through more luck than judgment managed to finish 3rd ootu of 16 and won a bucket of whiskey and coke, which I swear contain half a bottle of whiskey. After initially feeling rather smug, this soon became rather drunk, till it got to the point I could hardly walk, and I was asking Dan to take me home, or so she tells me.

Next day we went for a walk round the place to check it out, and thought about going tubing which is what most people come to Vang Vieng for. This is basically a pub crawl while floating down the river in an inner tube, stopping at various bars on the river bank along the way. However as it started raining and we were feeling a little worse for wear after the night before we decided to wait until the next day. We spent 2 more days there and the weather didn't improve with it being rainy and cold, and with the two of us being weeds we decided to give it a miss, though we were silly enough to get a couple of mountain bikes out, after woosing out in Chiang Mai, and again got about a mile down the road before agreeing that there are better things to be doing.

We then travelled down to the capital of Laos, Vientienne for a night before heading to the far south of Laos to a part of the Mekong called Four Thousand Islands. Whilst in Vientienne we met up with Jackson and James who we'd been out with in Chiang Mai. After a night of bowling, in which we showed the aussies how its done and found out that James bowls like a girl, we got pretty drunk, and decided to travel down with them.

Four thousand islands was beautiful, and the island Dong Khong that we were staying on was very quiet, not much to do at night but sample the Lao lao (rice whiskey very strong!) and the beer lao, while we were here we also found that the aussies not only cant bowl, but they cant hold their drink.

We decided to go on a day trip that one of the boat owners offered us at a cheap rate, it involved heading to one of the more southern islands to see a locomotive, then seeing the famous Iriwaddi freshwater dolphins that live in the Mekong, and then visiting a water fall. Anyway the boat trip was pleasant enough, but when we got to where the so called locomotive stood it was more like the ones you see in model villages and rusting to bits, it was so bad it was almost good, almost.

Next we headed to see the dolphins we were taken by boat out to the middle of the Mekong and told to get off on a large rock, form where we could see the dolphins. We could see the dolphins only they were about a mile away and every now and then you'd see a back breaking the surface, although it could have been a bloke scuba diving for all we knew. To make matters worse the guy driving the boat then sodded off to drop some guys off at the Cambodisa border, and left us there on a bare rock in the burning sun for an hour or so, it was so hot we went for a dip in the Mekong to cool off, except for Dan who chickened out, scared she might get some kind of worm or something.

We also got a couple of scooters out for the day to explore the island, which was huge and the size of the Mekong is unbelievable. Apart from this we spent the rest of our days here just taking it easy before deciding to head to Cambodia.