It was entirely possible that the driver we had on our journey to the Thai border from Chiang Mai had never taken a driving test. Trying to cure your car sickness by looking through the windscreen as though you are driving is an apparent disadvantage when you realise that the actual driver is taking sharp bends at a good 80 mph on the wrong side of the road. We arrived at our destination with about 4 hours to sleep before getting up the next morning to begin our border crossing to Laos. Naturally, always being the last one ready, I managed to lose the other five the next morning as they started their border crossing quest in a different truck about twenty minutes prior to yours truly. Then when I got to the Mekong river to take the boat over to Laos, I'd lost my Thailand departure card. Of course. Luckily they let me leave, and eventually I managed to get my Laos visa on the other side of the river after extreme frustration as they kept putting my passport to the bottom of the pile. Then I momentarily lost my ticket for the slow boat and became worringly close to my first break down. Finally met up with the other five and had another couple of hours wait for our slow boat to be ready. Laos Time by this point seemed to be worse than Thai Time.

I had this vision that the slow boat would be really authentic with wooden benches (especially since all the Lao people were selling cushions to cure those inevitable numb bums), but in fact it was a long wooden boat with paired coach seats randomly whacked in. Cushions being sold for slow boat = the first lie of Laos. However the bar was stocked with cold Beer Lao, so the most important factor was covered. The scenery was beautiful, large green mountains either side of the Mekong river and golden sandy beaches leading down to the water that wouldn't be out of place in the Caribbean.

On our slow boat we met a few people who recognised me as the girl who 'lost everything at the border crossing' (good) and we have been travelling with some of them ever since. The group grows. After the six hour journey to Pakbeng we got our first real taste of Laos with the locals meeting the slow boats at the harbour and offering us rooms for the night (fairly standard) and, less expected, loads of kids offering us opium.

The second day on the slow boat was pretty much the same for most bar myself, who had been up sick all night and was now running on approximately eight hours sleep over three nights. Another seven hours of lush mountains, locals fishing on the banks of the Mekong and a random wave that targetted the seat I was sitting on perfectly, soaking me through, and we arrived in Luang Prabang.

Our first night in the town was the eldest member of our group, Jamie's, birthday, and we celebrated in style at an authentic Lao club, complete with a few token lady boys and some interesting remixes of chart hits set to tv screens showing some Lao ladies taking their clothing off in a provocative manner. Other than that club Luang Prabang is a great place to chill out, with lots of French inspired bakeries and an amazing bar called Utopia, which I would describe as a chilled, outside Mahiki, but far far better as it opens up directly over the river and has a beach volleyball court.

One evening we climbed up to the buddah temple (or something to that effect...I'm not being ignorant - they all roll into one I promise) to watch the sunset over the whole of Luang Prabang and the Mekong which without a doubt beats watching the sun set over West London as you travel home on the Central line.

That pretty much covers Luang Prabang. Although before moving onto Vang Vieng, the home of tubing, we (surprise surprise) fitted in a visit to some waterfalls. I expect to be able to write a book on SE Asian waterfalls by the time I return home. Which would naturally fly off the shelves and be a number one bestseller I'm sure. x