All I can say about the slow boat is OH MY GOD! After lugging all our bags down to the river we were presented with a long wooden boat crammed with people sitting on wooden benches... it was so hilarious as we were to spend 2 whole days on this boat, just stopping over night in a small village called Pak Beng. The first day was absolutely pants and to be honest I think its because I knew I wouldn't be getting anywhere good on the first day. The day was ok though, Gabs made friends with some random strange people and got really drunk and I sat about chatting to people and as usual just talking absolute crap! We were 2 hours late leaving immigration so we didnt arrive in Pak Beng until 7pm and it was really dark, I mean pitch black and as the boat docked (or should I say rabdomly pulled up on the side of the Mekong all these little Lao kids came down to the boat, took your bag off you and carried it up this ridiculous slope... now, I was rather thankful for this as I had dumped my rucksack in Melbourne months ago for a pull along holdall and to be honest there was no way I was going to manage to make it up a steep slope which was made of the most slippery flippin' mud I have ever seen in my life. People were falling arse over tit constantly! When we finally got to the top of the hill the Lao boy who had carried my bag got really close to my face and bascially shouted GIVE ME 100 BAHT. I just looked at him like...what the heck?!? 100 BAHT to them is a s***e load of money and whilst I appreciated hime taking my bag I wasnt going to give him that much. After giving him 30 Baht, which is still quite a bit to them he looked at me quite menacingly and said WHY YOU LIE TO ME??! So I quickly ran off.. ha ha. Graeme was wetting himself laughing the whole time, it was quite funny but the blimmin' Lao robbing b*****d. No need to be so rude to me...manners go a long way you know!

Anyways, after constantly being hassled since being dumped off the boat by many guesthouse owners we wandered up this dirt track road and stumbled accross probably the most minging place and decided to stay there. it was funny cos when I signed in I notcied that Lo, James etc had stayed at exactly the same place, they must have felt as annoyed as we did and just thought sod it, this will do!

I shared a room with the crazy French girl Stephanie. Our room was discusting, not only did it smell of sewers and general pooey things the matresses were actually made of straw...i kid you not! It was one of those places where you are glad you came out alive! We went to the posh hotel for dinner (the posh hotel only costing about 10 quid!) and then we had a fab candle lit evening with loads of people from the slow boat just sitting around having a drink and a laugh. All the electricity went off at 10pm so I was clever and took my torch out as it was so dark you couldnt even see the end of your own nose!

I was woken up at 5:30am with all the noise from outside. These people get up so flippin' early! We had breakfast and had to get on the boat at 9:30am. Luckily today it went on time. I was feeling a lot happier knowing that by the end of today I would be in Luang Prabang! A real destination! The 2nd day on the boat was brilliant, I had such a good time and the scenery we saw on the second day was amazing. It was so beautiful and untouch and there were random stops along the side of the river at little villages where the kids would run down to the boat trying to sell you all sorts of crap and food and stuff. They were rather aggressive! The weather on the first day had been rather cloudy but today was perfect and it was nice just to sit and stare out the side of the boat!