CHIANG MAI to LAOS!!!!! day one!!

Early start again.. we booked a trip from chiang mai to Laos by bus then the slow boat and it was supposed to take 5hours by bus then a hotel for the night in Laos.. However it was not quite like that! we got picked up at 8.30am, in the bus already was a german couple and an english teacher.. went to pick someone else up - Derek and Liam.. they had given their passports in to the travelagents to organise their laos visas.. but they hadnt got them back so before we started we had stopped again for half an hour... then we picked up the welsh boys - andy, adam, brendan, elliot and megatron (!HA) we started the journey as we meant to go on and stopped at a service station for a toilet stop!!

so we travelled for 8hours with lots of toilet stops and lunch at the side of a motorway!!! obviously chicken and rice or noodles and rice.. finally we got to the laos boarder. they took our passports off us and we got called thru one by one and were allowed to cross the boarder!

after we crossed the boarder we were loaded onto the back of a truck.. welll us 3 girlies the welsh boys and liam and derek.. the other 3 got the luxury 4 by 4! we got taken to another office to get another stamp in our passport but had to pay another 30bahts after we had paid 3450bahts for the trip.. (we are now goin to haggle everythin!!!)

soback on the road again 5pm by now, we were told we would reach our hotel by 2pm.. so we asked how long the journey would be he said 20minutes... as always!! we passed a seven elevn and we got the driver to stop for beer!!! hehe BEER LAO! the boys all got a couple each and we got one.. then we carried on after 45mins or so all the beer had gone and bladders were burstin, so we stopped at a gas station.. it consisted of 2 barrels with alcohol optics on the top (or somethin like that!) and a house so we all pilled inm all 10 of us and used their loo!!! hoh ho ho.. and of course stocked u[p on more beer... back in the truck. another hour and it had gone dark and we were very high up in the mountains and hadnt seen any other carsfor a while..rachael and mieke had their first out door / side of the road pee... hehe..

ok so after 3 and a half hours or so!!! we arrived at our hostel but it was gorgeous and the 3 older guys had arrived like an hour before us!!!! anyways we dumped our bags in our room and ran down for tea we were starvin but the menu consisted or rice, noodles and chicken again!!! and some things we had never heard of!!! i tried tom yum goong.. it was rice prawns and chilli! hm,mmmmm.. had a beer lao and a lao whisky to wash it down..

anyway we managed to stay up till about 11.30pm, but the boys were out drinking us so we turned in for the night! another eventful day of travellin we think!!!