As we were in Chiang Rai, Thailand and wanted to cross into Laos it was logical to enter into Huay Xai (about 2 hours away). As Laos is so mountainous the only options you have to get to the town of Luang Prabang is either by the slowboat down the mekong which takes 2 days with a stopover in a small town, or to get a night bus that snakes through the mountains and takes at least 15 hours. We decided on the slow boat - when we came to Laos before we had crossed over by land into the capital of Vientiene.

So we caught the bus from Chaing Rai to the border town of Chaing Khong. The mekong river provides a natural border for the two countries at this point, we caught a tuk tuk to the boat pier and could have easily have missed the passport control to get stamped out of Thailand. You can see the border town of Huay Xai on the other side very clearly and it seemed quite strange that it was another country just over the river. Two american girls who were on our bus crossed over the river with us on a tiny little narrowboat, the crossing took about 3 minutes! Big lorries also use this crossing and have to get these special ferries accross, it did look quite bizarre to see a huge lorry floating in the middle of the river!

And so we entered Laos! We walked up a steep hill from the boat and there was a tiny passport office to get our visa which again we could have easily walked by, we had to fill out a few forms and then we were granted our 30 day visa for which we had to pay about 30 dollars each. I thought we were going to be bombarded by guesthouse and slowboat touts but it was a very sleepy little town which was actually more like a street! We withdrew some money from the ATM, their currency is Kip and is very confusing as its all in thousands- we withdrew 1 million kip from the ATM which equalled about 86 pound. We found somewhere to stay the night at BAP guesthouse which was run by a very grumpy old lady who we thought might hit us when we said we wanted to buy our slowboat tickets from the pier rather than a more inflated price from her. So we walked about 20 minutes up the road to the slowboat pier and bought our tickets from another very grumpy woman! In the evening we went out with the american girls for dinner at a womens empowerment project restaurant - it was up on a hill overlooking the street and we could see Thailand twinkling over the river. We had sticky rice and veggies and a dark beer lao which was very tasty. We went back to our room and were greeted by a huge cockroach! Errrr

The slowboat was due to leave at 11am - we wanted to make sure we got a good seat so we set off about 9am and walked to the pier, we got some food supplies on the way - peanut butter baguettes (from a nutter of a girl that waved a big foam hand at us!!) we also got pringles and oreos - healthy as.... The boat already had a few people on board - all foreigners! There were old car seats in two aisles and also some benches with tables, there was a toilet onboard and a little snack bar (with rather overinflated prices) it looked really cute. The owners seemed to live on the boat and had a little kitchen on the back and a tv near the engine. The boat filled up as it got nearer 11, we didn't actually set off until about 11:30 - a man that was leading a tour group from Chiang Mai made a speech about getting a room for the overnight stop at Pak Beng - he was saying it would be really late when we arrived and that he had rooms for 400 bhat - we had read that there were plenty of rooms available for cheaper so we ignored him. Then we started the two day journey, we chugged down the Mekong, the scenery was stunning - tree topped mountains either side, temples dotted along now and again and locals fishing on boats- the boats engine was very loud so it wasn't very peaceful. We just relaxed taking it all in, ate and played cards. Parts of the mekong were quite rough with rapids and swirling whirlpools! About 5:30 we pulled into Pak Beng for the overnight stay. We all piled off the boat and were plagued with guesthouse touts, we started talking to two scottish girls, twin sisters Eleanor and Carolyn and set off to find a room with them. We found a really really cheap room at the top of the steep street - the room was pretty grim, just a wooden hut covered in cobwebs - we decided to shower and Kam nearly had an accident when he realised there was a hornets nest in the bathroom! We had to get a little boy to remove it. We went out for dinner with Eleanor and Carolyn and played some cards, everyone we passed seemed to be selling Opium and weed! When it was time for bed the girls realised they were given the wrong key to their room and the owners had gone to bed and we couldn't wake them up. The only person left awake in the whole of Pak Beng seemed to be a topless man wandering around selling opium, we didn't really want to ask for his help but he could see that we needed some - luckily he managed to wake up the owners and the girls got their keys, we all went to bed but could here someone whispering hello outside...........

We woke up nice and early as the boat was due to leave at 9am and as it was going to be a different boat we wanted to go a bit earlier to get a good seat. We bought some more baguettes and snacks for the journey. We set off on time and went through more unbelievable scenery and got to Luang Prabang about 5ish, we were dropped at a pier a few km's out of town which everyone was annoyed about as we all had to pay 10,000 kip to get into the centre - some locals who had caught the boat a little upstream stayed on the boat so it was obvious that the boat was going to head into the main pier but we were all ordered to get off - some people tried to protest but it was ignored!

So we then caught a tuk tuk into Luang Prabang.................