19/10/07 - 20/10/07 Friend House 150B The morning after the night before and we had planned to be up and on an early bus... but with those hangovers there was no chance... so we left early afternoon feeling shocking... Let's just say the bus nearly got some unwanted re-decorating. But after lots of hangover food and a sleep I felt much better. We arrived in Mae Hong Son late afternoon and as n-one had been in any state to look up accommodation on the bus we ...

Beautiful P a i 16/10/07 - 19/10/07 Evergreen Guesthouse 200B This is going to sound mad, but I've left spaces between the letters of the town we visited (said Pie), as I'm hoping it'll come up in less google searches... This place is so gorgeous that it doesn't need to be spoilt by hundreds of tourists, although there are already a lot there and we've by no means discovered the place... but until I got to Thailand I'd never even heard of it and even when we di...

14/10/07 - 16/10/07 Malak Guesthouse 160B The border from Lao to Thailand was really weird and relaxed, at Lao we just walked along to the rivers edge, got our passports checked and stamped then jumped in a longboat to cross the river. Almost forgot to pass through Thai immigration at the other side... but the tuk-tuk guys reminded us... d'oh! Then jumped in a tuk-tuk to the bus station (I use this term loosely!). Although there is a bus straight to Chang Mai, i...

Huay Xai 13/10/07 - 14/10/07 $6 The second day of our slowboat took us from Pakbeng to the border town of Huay Xai, it should have been a 7 hour journey, but we have come to learn that Lao time is a little different to realtime and due to their laid back approach everything takes that little bit longer. But as we seem to be travelling in the opposite direction to everyone else our boat was really quite and we got a bench seat each to stretch out on (doesn't ma...

SLOW BOAT TO PAKBENG 12/10/07 - 13/10/07 $3 Decided to take a slow boat up the Mekong River to make our way back to Thailand and get to see the north. The slow boat takes 2 days, whereas the speed boat alternative only takes a few hours and is around the same price. But forget the plush white fancy powerful speedboats that spring to mind... these speedboats are pretty much a wooden canoe with a massive engine strapped the back and there are fatalities on pret...