The two day boat trip from the Thai border to Luang Prabang gets very mixed reviews from everyone we met who did it so we were a little apprehensive about doing it. It is possible to do the trip in seven hours on a speedboat, but after reading that the Lonely Planet calls them "death traps" and seeing them first hand bouncing across the water we decided very quickly against that option.

In the end though the boat trip turned out to be really quite good. We were fortunate to be taking the less travelled route of Luang Prabang to Thailand and not the more popular journey the opposite direction. As a result our slow boat was half empty (or full depending on your viewpoint) so we had double seats to ourselves and plenty of space to move around. Good news indeed as I reckon that being on a full boat would have been a nightmare as the seats are wooden benches and the cushion you get given is about a centremetre thick and means a numb a$$ is a dead cert within a few hours of setting off.

There were only about ten Westerners onboard and we all made friends quickly, they included a brother and sister from Hoylake, Liverpool so it was nice to speak to someone who taks proper! He was called Roy aswell brilliantly enough.

The scenery alng the Mekong was beautiful although by mid afternoon you'd seen enough of it and you just wanted to land and get off the damn thing, each day was a good 9-10 hours sailing. On night one we stopped in Pak Beng which isn't really worth mentioning except that our room was only $3 a night and was rubbish. Interestingly all the electricity in the town goes off at 10pm.

The second night we got to the border town of Huay Xai; still on the Laos side. Again nothing much to say really, we stayed in a slightly better place and everyone whoo'd meton the boat went out for a meal together which was nice. The next day we crossed the river and the border and there we were in Thailand with yet another country behind us.

We ended up spending only about 12 days in Laos and will have fond memories. We enjoyed it for the most part and met some nice people. Luang Prabang was the best part and we'd recommend it to everyone.