We woke up to torrential rain. I hadn't slept very well and had spent the hour before we got up, mentally preparing for 3 days of getting rained on. I wasn’t looking forward to trekking in the jungle as it was, doing it wet even less so. If we were staying in overnight lodgings with hot water and electricity, I’d have been okay. Getting rained on all day, to arrive in a tree house with no way of getting dry or warm, was not my idea of a good time.

It turned out Edd had also not slept very well and suggested we give the Gibbon Experience a miss. I was genuinely quite shocked at the suggestion (but secretly relieved). We discussed the pro’s and con’s of the trip and ultimately decided neither of us fancied doing it in the rain. (I’m talking, thunderstorm first thing in the morning, hasn’t stopped all night, kind of rain). We hadn’t paid any money for it, so weren’t going to lose anything by not going – except the experience, of course.

Edd went to the Italian guy’s room to let him know we weren’t going and it turned out he didn’t want to go either! He’d paid, however, with no refund option, so had to choose between losing the money and doing it wet. (We never saw him again, so we figured he’d opted to do it wet). Downstairs at reception, Edd bought boat tickets to Luang Prabang; the German girls we’d met already had tickets and we decided to join them. They were up at 8.30am and surprised to see us; we explained that we were joining them on the 2-day journey down the Mekong, as the rain had put us off trekking.

We bought a few snacks at a local shop and had some breakfast at the guesthouse restaurant. 9.30am, our took took picked us all up and took us to the pier where the boat was docked. He wanted our passports to buy our boat tickets, but I refused to part with them. I didn’t know him from a bar of soap; there was no way I was handing my passport over to him. Getting stuck in Laos with no legal documents was not on my to-do list; Edd went with him to buy our boat tickets. We were informed that our boat would be leaving at 11am and had an hour and a half to kill. We bought a sandwich at a little store, for our lunch, and made our way to the boat to get settled. There was nothing to do so it was going to be a long wait.

The boat was quite long and you entered at the front. The floor boards had been lifted right where you climbed in and staff were taking peoples backpacks and packing them under the floor. People that had come with rolling suitcases had an issue as their bags did not fit between the support beams. They had to roll their bags down the narrow aisle to the back room where the engine was. The seats were old car seats screwed to bits of wood to make them stay up straight. The bits of wood, however, were not fastened to anything, so the seats could move around.

Just before 11am, we were briefed on the stop over we would be making in Pak Beng for the evening and informed that there was no electricity and no hot water in the village. The man then informed us that his guesthouse, however, had these things for 500 Baht a night. Yeah right. The people that had been around for a few weeks all looked at each other as if to say 'liar liar pants on fire.’ There were a few people that booked his rooms. Suckers. We left at 11.05am and prepared for the long journey down the river. We expected to get there around 7pm (as that is what the Laos liar told us).

I updated the blog on Microsoft Word as there was no Internet anymore. My Thai sim card worked when we were still close to the border in Huay Xai. Deep, dark Loas, however, it did not. I read a book on my Ipad and Edd and the German girls played the card game ‘Cheat.’ I joined them after a while and lost every round – far too honest as it turns out.

Edd and I then decided to teach them how to play Mexican Trains; I’d bought the travel version and we hadn’t used it up to this point. We rearranged bags on the floor (there were bags absolutely everywhere) and made a small space for us to lay our cardboard dominoes out. It was quite tricky on the boat as we were playing in the middle of the passage way, it was pouring with rain and very windy, which meant that the plastic screens that could be rolled down to protect us from the rain were rolled up instead; they couldn’t be fastened down, which would have made logical sense, and the wind was giving them a beating.

We stopped twice to pick up and offload locals and at 5.30pm, arrived at Pak Beng. We were surprised to be getting there so much earlier than expected and then realised that it was all part of the Laos liar’s strategy. Make people think they’re arriving really late, to a dark village with nothing, and they’re more than likely to book your accommodation for fear of not getting a room anywhere and eaten by wild animals.

We got off the boat in disarray as nobody had prepared for it. Our bags were all under the floorboards, but we all had to get off the boat before the staff could unpack them. Vultures descended on us, trying to get us to book their rooms for the night. Edd managed to get a deal for 50 000kip for a room - £4 / 200 Baht. A far cry from the 500 Baht the Laos liar was asking for that morning. We opted to walk to the accommodation instead of taking the ‘free took took.’ Nothing was free in this place and we didn’t want to be forced to take a horrific room just because we used their ‘free took took.’

The 4 of us walked up to the guest house and inspected the rooms that were on offer. They weren’t great, but they were clean enough to spend the night. Edd inspected the mattress and found what looked like bed bugs on his mattress. We were going to be using our silk liners tonight.

We dumped our things down, ordered breakfast and lunch from the guesthouse (we had to order in advance so they could make it before we left early the next morning) and then went in search of an ATM and supper.

The ATM was quite a distance away, along the main road - all gravel, and we drew some more silly money. We were going to have dinner at an Indian restaurant (in Laos?) but they didn’t have prawns on their menu and we’d seen a different Indian restaurant further up the street that did. We politely excused ourselves and walked back to the other restaurant.

We had a great meal that included garlic naan bread – no mozzies were eating us tonight! We made our way back to our accommodation, as we were all exhausted (from all the nothing we’d done all day). Edd and I climbed into our liners and cocooned ourselves from potential creepy crawlies. We had 1 more day of boredom on a boat and had to be up early to do it.