It had already gone 10.45am and I was meant to get picked up at 10, I should have remembered I was back to the 'Asia time scale'. It finally arrived and as I loaded my bag onto the mini bus I gulped - I was at the front next to the driver on a fold out type of seat without a seatbelt and on a higher level than anyone else. Great. I did luckily have a lovely girl next to me but a very numb bum for the 5 hours of the journey; seeing a sign 'cabbages and condoms' did however make the journey more amusing. We stopped at the White Temple en route to our guest house in Chiang Khong which was at the border to Laos and surprisingly the room was very nice! This was my first day of experiencing travelling alone since January. It did feel very strange but at the same time it was exciting meeting new people. Waking up every two hours to the sound of thunder & lightning was not something I have been used to in these last few months. I left the Guest House in the horrid rain (so glad I brought a rain jacket with me) and headed to the Thai border for the visa then after that took a ferry across to Huay Xai in Laos for the immigration process. The long day had begun. We spendt two hours faffing in a small shop stall, having been dropped off by a bright pink bus, to stock up with food for the forthcoming journey whilst the guide was scanning our passports. He arrived with them hanging off his motorbike in a plastic bag (nice and safe). I then took the slow boat for seven hours. The boat had seat numbers; I knew this would be interesting. I sat in mine, the gypsy-like red curtains blowing in and out of the boat. I heard a loud American voice, looked up, and he sat down next to me. He was in his 40's and had a dive top on. This was great I thought because I'll have something to talk about. After he mentioned he was on his way to Cambodia to teach diving the topic of 'Hollywood' talk started to drop into the conversation. He was a director (writing and selling the original script for Swat). I don't think I got a word in edgeways for the next 6 hours of the journey. 'I could fly to Paris tomorrow' followed by money talk, followed by the hundreds and hundreds of places he had been to, stars he had met and hung out with (using their nick names or first names e.g. Jack…..who's Jack? Jack Nicholson), hundreds of pictures and hundreds of award do's he had been to. It was a one man show. He gave me his details and told me to contact him about my music as he knows a lot of people in the industry especially if I'm looking to go into film music. I guess that was a plus. So after being talked at, stars names numbing my brain, the boat dropped us all off to Pak Beng village - bashing into all the other boats which were lined up to cushion our arrival. I've never experienced such a strange place. There was nothing apart from guesthouses and about two restaurants all made specifically for the tourists taking the same route. My first beerlao and laolao rice whisky shots were consumed here in a bar, which opened just for us, along with two locals, two people I met at the guesthouse the night before and three guys from England from the same boat. The curfew that Laos has (11-12) soon made our night a quick one, which was probably just as well. That, however, didn't stop us from having the surreal situation of being followed into our room by a local man selling us weed. After five minutes we finally pushed him out, ensuring that all our doors were locked. The boat left from Pak Bang at the early hours of 9am. The long eight hour ride was intense but the views, card games (some taught by an Arab guy were somewhat interesting) and sleep soon passed the time…oh, and did I mention the floating dead pigs we passed which smelt like camembert? - it was foul and sure put me off from wanting cheese, which at this moment in time is VERY hard! It was past 5 'o'clock when I arrived at Luang Prabang, dripping of sweat loading my backpack and rucksack on me like a donkey. I walked around with the two people from the UK that I had met on the first night and who I stayed with on the second night, Amy and Sam, looking for a place to stay. I had made it to Laos! It was a long journey but worth it on the Mekong river; I'm already in love with Laos and the adventure here hasn't even begun!