On 5th July, we left Chiang Mai and got picked up in a mini bus with other tourists at midday to go to Chiang Khong on the Thai border with Laos. During the trip, the driver stopped off to let us walk about in some of the local villages and to buy some supplies of drinks and food for the journey as it took 5 hours to get to Chiang Khong. The highlight was a stop off at a white temple (no idea what it was called) and talking with three girls from the US (Heather, Monely and Shabna).

On arrival, we checked into the TNK guest house which was booked for us by the tour operator in Chiang Khong. It wasn't something we would choose to stay in (or anyone else!!), it was a tiny room, had only a fan and no air conditioning, the curtains didn't fit the windows properly and the door to our room had obviously been broken in at some point. Rather than fix the lock, they put a latch across with a padlock........ingenious except that someone could have easily broken in by unscrewing the hinge on the outside of the door....what a joke!! We felt uneasy about this and stayed in the reception area (if you could call it that) with other tourists which actually ended up being fun. The rude owner of the guest house cooked dinner for us all. Amazingly the chicken curry thing had only two tiny pieces of chicken even though there were about 15 of us. We were glad we had all finished our dinner, as not long after there was a power cut.......commonplace in the village apparently. We just wished we had taken a hot shower first though.

Chiang Khong was a strange village with a few bars and restaurants which were basically wooden huts. We don't know how the locals coped as there were only a couple of small mini-marts and more atmosphere on the moon! One of the Irish girls we were talking to said she saw a snake on the doorstep of one of the shops, which she thought was poisonous, given that the owner started panicking.......it just gets better and better. Lisa couldn't relax after this and kept looking on the floor in case she saw it!

We went to bed about midnight. We didn't sleep that well due to it being very hot and the fan being a complete waste of time as the blades seemed to rotate about once an hour. Mark was up at 6am taking some photos of the sunset on the Mekong River across Laos.

The next morning, we crossed the border by boat to Huay Xai for immigration.....we were in Laos!!! We queued up with our completed visa application, gave across $35 each (best to have US$ for the visa as you get shafted with any other currency - you can't get Laos Kip until you are in the country) and were issued with a visa. No hassle but a little slow.

After this, we hiked up a hill to the local bank and met our driver to take us to the boat that would transport us to Luang Prabang with a half-way stop at a village called Pak Beng, Laos. The seats on the boat were hard (most were wooden benches - there were a few leather seats though but these were long gone when we arrived) and we were not looking forward to the 6 hour boat journey ahead of us! Luckily we had read about this on the internet and bought cushions during our stay in Chiang Khong. Others were not quite as diligent and had some discomfort on the boat.

Laos.....here we come!!!