The bus picked us up from our hostel and we travelled around Chiang Mai picking up other people. Three girls got on from Kent and 4 laddish lads from Manchester so we assumed they were to be our companions for the 3 day leg to Luang Prabang.

About 20 mins into the journey, the phone rang for the driver and he had a conversation in Thai. Then he randomly passed it to one of the Kent girls who looked at the phone bemusedly before asking a curious 'hello'? In typical Thai fashion, the girls had booked onto a straight trip to Chiang Khong to catch a bus but had no idea we were to stop at the White Temple in Chiang Rai en route. Luckily they weren't on a tight schedule and could join us for this quick trip!

We first stopped at a place for a quick bite before getting to the temple. Fortunately I was wearing a maxi skirt, but the two girls were given some 'fashionable' white aprons to put on over their denim shorts. We've seen our fair share of temples in Thailand, but the white temple is something different - it was absolutely stunning! Only the photos can do it justice. We then had a bemused 2 minutes wondering whether the monk sat at the front of the temple was real or not. He didn't look like he was breathing at all but yet he looked so life like! I think I was the only one out of the 5 of us who believed it could be real - aren't monks known for meditating for super duper lengths of time?!

Aside: I just googled this and discovered the monk was made from wax...more fool me!

We moved on from the temple and finally arrived in Chiang Khong. Having booked the tour we had no idea what our hostel was going to be like which was slightly risky. Fortunately we turned up to find a fairly decent room/wooden hut that reminded us of the one in Pai. Thanfully there were no spiders this time, but there were plenty of cockroaches! We later found out from some Americans we met that we would receive bad karma for killing Boris as they kill cockroaches for us (just about the only thing that does kill the little b*****s!) so turns out that karma came to kick our butt really soon!

The hostel also surprised us as it actually had a recent decent swimming pool and we had arrived there early enough to catch a couple of rays before the sun disappeared and we had dinner (which was also surprisingly nice!) After dinner we chilled by the bar in the pool and properly met the Mancunian guys. It was then that we met the guy who had sliced all the skin off his shin from a motorcycle accident - thank god we didn't hire any in Pai! They were a laugh but made Sam and Henry a bit more laddish than they had been as they promptly went to the shop to buy alcohol and cigarettes, a habit we hadn't seen much of since we had been with them.

After a chilled evening we returned to our cockroach infested room that was sweltering hot with only a fan oscillating between the beds. Charlottes bed was in the middle so she got the rotation of the fan twice - Gemma and I were silently very put out by this and even more so when we had sweated our way through the night to find Charlotte had had to put her duvet on as she was too cold. Grumble grumble!