This morning we woke up inside our fancy mosquito nets and had a quick rinse before leaving the hostel in Chiang Khong at 8:30. After what seemed like a million border controls and 3 different modes of transport, we finally arrived into Laos. I thought it was getting hectic by this point, but little did we know the best drama was yet to come...

Our first stop was to the office of the company running the boat trip. Here we were introduced to a very smily local, who spoke very good English. He started a little speech about the fact that we could trust him, how he wouldn't lie to us and that he had just secured us 'good seats' on the boat. He promised us he would be on the boat with us and then suggested that we stock up on supplies from the local shop (probably his own store on hindsight) as there are no supplies on the boat, including no water. After spending a small fortune in the shop, getting confused with the sudden change from Baht to Kip, we were whisked away to the slow boat. We haven't seen the tour guide since and we found that the boat was fully stocked with food. Surprisingly, this was the first scam we had fallen for, Thailand had been amazing.

So, onto the small boat. Charlotte, Sam and I were in the first taxi to the port and navigated our way to one of 10 slow boats (the only one who seemed to have people on). We immediately realised something was wrong when a lot of other travellers started yelling that there was no room for us and that we would have to get off. After pleading for our rucksacks back, that had already gone into the hold, we finally got back onto the port and were reunited with Gem and Henry. We re-checked our tickets, confirmed there was only one more boat leaving today and reluctantly re-entered the boat. Miraculously, though somewhat suspiciously, in the space of 2 minutes, 20 seats had materialised at the back and we happily made our way down.

We then discovered what the fuss was about. There definitely hadn't been room for us before as the back had previously been filled with local Laotian families who had now been booted into the back hold (hidden out of view). Third class citizens of the Titanic came to mind as I guiltily took my seat and reassessed the situation.

The other travellers who had previously yelled to get us off the boat updated us and said that basically the safe capacity for the boat was 70 people. All the seats had been filled, but they were relocating the Laotians to make room for us travellers. We now had 120 people on board with only 1 life jacket between 3-4 people. I didn't mind about this too much, I know I can swim and optimistically thought that the boat wouldn't sink. That is until one of the original travellers then said the last slow boat they were on hit rocks and created a hole. Their boat was under capacity at this point. Suffice to say, it was at this point that the mutiny escalated.

We were now over capacity and incredibly, the captain was still attempting to push more and more travellers on, many of whom didn't understand our anger that they were filling the boat more. They couldn't see the 50 or so small Laotian faces peeking through the gaps in the back.

At this point we started panicking with fleeting images of us capsizing into the Mekong River, clinging onto bits of debris and avoiding the probable existence of anacondas. Not to be too dramatic, of course.

To cut a very long story short, a lot of yelling ensued, several 'we want our money backs' were muttered and a smattering of 'you will get bad karma' came from our fellow travellers (thought the latter complaint was pretty harsh) It wasn't until we all decided to stand up and walk off saying we would complain that they finally said they would put 2 boats on. That is, for the 50 or so people who were still on the pier waiting to get on. The captain brought up the board before any of us could decide to get off to join the other boat and we set sail, knowing full well that we still had a smuggled hoard of Laotians out back.

Charlotte had a very lucky escape at this point as the captain was pulling up the board when she was off the boat. Luckily after a lot of shouting from me and Gem, she was able to leap aboard at the last moment.

We are now plodding merrily along down the Mekong River on a boat that is at double capacity, chugging out black acrid smoke that is making our eyes water and with a racket that is going to be hard to endure for the 7 hour journey ahead of us. Its safe to say that this was a fairly scary experience as the Laotian company running the whole debacle were getting really irate and were just shoving people on without any thought for their safety.

On that note, hopefully we won't capsize and can sit to reflect on our near death, 'Pirates of the Caribbean' escapade. If we make it to the other side, there will be an update later!

*update* - we arrived safely in Pakbeng and were driven only 2 minutes away to our guest house where we had a good meal with some very interesting hosts who spoke fairly good English. Their favourite thing to say was 'same same, but different'. Our rooms were comfy but the shower only let out a dribble so it was a slow process washing my hair.
We made friends with some French girls on our bus so played s***head and a Wink Murder ljke game with cards for a while. After that, we all went to bed and slept relatively well until I got really bad cramp at about 5am!