30th October 2009 - 3rd November 2009:

Our journey from Chang Mai in total took about a day and a half and consisted of a minibus journey to our overnight hostel and then a speedboat from the Thai border along the Mekong River into Luang Prabang in Laos.

The minibus journey was where the start of Liza's new found travel sickness occurred (not very good when you are travelling around the world and combined with Sean's minor fear of flying probably means we are the worst pair of travellers in the world!!).

In fairness to Liza when we booked the transport to Luang Prabang we weren't advised that Michael Schumacher's long lost Taiwanese brother was going to be driving us to the hostel - we gathered that he must have had a big argument with the break pedal given his reluctance to use it during any part of the journey and worked out that we had averaged almost 70mph for the entire journey!!!

Now we aren't too adverse to a bit of speed and so 70mph would be more than acceptable if we were driving along the motorway, however the vast majority of our trip was actually through mountain roads that consisted of extremely sharp bends and meant everyone on board was thrown left and right like rag dolls on a helter skelter theme park ride.

It was so bad that even some of the blokes (i.e. Sean) were feeling rather dodgy, whilst others were betting on how early we would get to our hostel given the speed we were going.

Thankfully we arrived in one piece - and about an hour and a half earlier than planned - and settled down in our bed for a short sleep before waking early in the morning for some breakfast and the speedboat part of our journey.

However little did we know when we booked this trip that travelling by speed boat in Laos is considered to be one of the most dangerous ways to travel - lets just put it this way they give you crash helmets as you get onto the boat.

Rather stupidly, given what we have experienced to date, we were actually surprised that the speedboats were nowhere near the same as the ones you get at home - they are basically very narrow wooden boats about 5ft wide that are powered by a motorbike engine with a propeller sticking out the end and have a small plank of wood going from one side of the boat to the other that is used as a seat.

Alarm bells warning us of the journey ahead did actually start to ring before we even left our hostel when the manager tried to sell us cushions for the boat and gave us a shocked look of "you are going to regret that" after we didn't take him up on his offer.

However when we got through immigration and were waiting in the travel office for our transport to the speedboats we saw even more cushions for sale and, given most of the other passengers seemed to have one, we decided not to take a chance and bought two, which ended up being a great decision as we would literally have been in an even worst state by the end otherwise.

We were warned by several people and had also read beforehand that Laos people are extremely laid back and don't really keep to any sort of advertised schedule - basically Liza's worst nightmare - simply doing things when they are ready. This was very evident straight away when despite the fact that as far as we could see the speedboat, passengers and driver were all present we were still forced to sit around on the dock twiddling our thumbs for almost 30 minutes before being boarded.

To be honest had we known what was to come we would probably have asked to stay longer on the dock - the seats were so uncomfortable, even with the cushion, and the boat was so flimsy that literally every wave that we went over literally threw us a foot up in the air and ended with a large thump back onto the rock hard seat.

It was so uncomfortable that Sean's bum fell asleep numerous times throughout the journey and got so bad that just prior to the last stop his arse went into a coma and meant he was in pain whether he stood up or sat down!!!!

In the end he was forced to rest his back across the seat, with one leg dangling out of the boat and his bum cheeks floating in the air - not a pretty sight but a funny one nevertheless - whilst holding on for dear life trying not to fall out of the boat.

It was at this time that we saw some amazing views, the best being when we went around a slight curve and saw the sun setting over the river which was very picturesque.

We are glad to report however that there were no further incidents and we arrived safely at our destination only to be greeted by a load of tuk tuk drivers who Liza now considered to be more untrustworthy than the speed boat.

Our main priority in Luang Prabang was to catch up on some much needed sleep given all the travelling which we had done in the last few weeks and the big trek in Chang Mai. It was very similar to Hoi An - very quaint and peaceful, so peaceful in fact that all the bars, restaurants, shops etc were all closed by 10.30pm!!

Our first night there we ended up a restaurant where apparently David Beckham once said that they served the best French fries in the world. Don't know if we would completely agree with Mr Beckham's views on that one - we think McDonalds do just as good a job!!!

While we were in Luang Prabang we did manage to have a look around their night market which sold everything from table cloths to bags to baby books to slippers, to lanterns, to snake wine and Sean got into his backpacker groove and bought a wrist band and Liza bought some fancy rings.

The rest of our days were filled with chilling out in a bar called Utopia which was along the riverfront and lazed about on comfy daybeds reading, listening to music and drinking. However this time the drinks did not consist of all alcohol as we were still trying to get the 'Happy Water' out of our system.

This was all topped off by the best little Scandinavian Bakery which had beautiful homemade baguettes and some wonderful little shortbread biscuits - just the comfort we needed.