Hi everyone I'm finally catching up, and although none of the dates match up too well, we're pretty certain that we got to Laos on 15th July and took the slow boat down the Mekong into Luang Prabang. This takes 2 days, with an overnight stop at some horrible little town along the way (but more of that later). So the 11 of us (us 3, the 4 Irish guys and the 4 English girls)arrived at the Laos border and immediately changed up some money. 20000 kip to 1 pound sterling (rough estimate). This made us all millionaires and we spent 10 minutes strutting around showing each other big wads of notes in atrue 80's Loadsamoney stylie. Then we booked a hotel for the overnight stay and into a tuk tuk for the short ride to the boat. As it didn't leave for another three quarters of an hour or so we sat down and had some much needed breakfast and generally chilled out for a while. As we made our way down to the pier there were two boats there, one which already looked slightly overcrowded and one that was about half full. Obviously we went to walk across the crowded one onto the emptier one and were immediately rebuffed by the blokey and told to sit on the crowded one. And boy was it crowded. Two to a seat and I'd be lying if I said I had enough leg room to actually put both feet on the floor (and two of the Irish lads held us up for another 15 minutes or so because they were still waiting for the chips they'd ordered. Well worth the wait though cos they were lovely - cheers fellas). But that was all made incosequential by the most amazing views so far. This part of Laos is essentially huge mountains with the Mekong and it's tributaries easing it's way among them. Absolutely majestic. It just looks so beautifully untouched, and it was easy to imagine prehistoric life was taking place right before our eyes. I can't begin to tell you how small and insignificant and at one with nature it made me feel. An everchanging natural work of art and I wouldn't have cared if we'd stayed on the boat for two days solid, leg room or not. But after 7 hours or so the boat put in at a pier and off we got to be greeted by 20 - 30 people all trying to tout us to their hotels, sell us weed or convince us they had the best opium. As we'd already booked before we got on the boat we just stood and shouted the name of the hotel until the guy who was touting for them came our way. Worst hotel ever. Well half of it was. Half of it was brand spanking new and the other half was proper grotty. We didn't even want to touch the bed, much less sleep on it. The boys on the other hand (to their serious delight and much bragging) got taken to the new part. So at least 4 of the 11 of us were happy. What the hell we thought, it's only one night anyway. During all the confusion of us all looking at each others rooms and trying to decide what we were up to that evening, I came out of the girls room to find a Laos bloke just walking into our room. I walked behind him and said 'Hi mate, you ok?', he turned looked at me smiled and said sorry about 5 times and walked off. Now, I didn't think much about it, just figured he was looking for one of the people staying there. Even later when the girls said that someone had walked into their rooms as well, no one was particularly worried. Wrong! It turns out about 3 days later when we're safely in Luang Prabang that Charlotte has had her bag gone through and 150 pound sterling and 150 pounds worth of travellers cheques are gone. This took untold amounts of phone calls and trips to travel agents to sort out and caused her and to a lesser degree the rest of us shed loads of stress. But not knowing this at the time, we met downstairs for a quick drink before heading out for dinner. This is when i started to get the feeling that this wasn't a particularly friendly town. It just felt dark and a bit depressing. None of the staff were particularly unfriendly, but they weren't particularly friendly either. When one of them asked us how long we were staying for and I told him just the one night on the way to Luang Prabang (LP) he just sort of grunted and muttered 'everyone always only ever stay one night'. This is when I really started to dislike the place. This was obviously a town who got through on whatever the overnighters spent and as such they couldn't care less about you (or your room). They never really got the chance to get to know you which must depress them a bit as as a rule they like to talk to you and find out about you and generally have a bit of a laugh with you. This theme continued throughout the evening and the next morning too. But I digress. So after a couple of drinks in the bar, I headed back upstairs to grab some money and as i walked in and switched on the light something bolteed from under the grubby bed and into the corner. Now I only caught a brief glimpse of it but it looked farly large and sounded like an elephant when it was running. Steeling myself for whatever hellish nightmare this was going to be I forced myself to go over to the corner (there was a little bit jutting out so it was kind of like two corners in one and I couldn't see the part where the wee beastie had run to) and found....nothing. Just a smallish hole. This freaked me out even more. So telling myself it was ok, it must have just been a gecko (there's at least one or two in every room and Mandy tends to name them. And besides, they eat mossies and other pesky flying things) I repeated this mantra as I walked on shaky legs back downstairs, and by the time I'd got back to the table I'd pretty much convinced myself. And off we went for dinner. Indian. And although the waiter was probably the most unfriendly we'd encountered anywhere (in Southeast Asian terms that means he didn't constantly and genuinely smile the whole time) the food was actually really good. Back for a few more beers at the hotel (there were no bars apparently) and Mand got off to bed. I'd left my packed lunch from the boat on the bed when I'd first got in, and something had munched through the plastic bag, through the polystyrene container and had eaten a fair amount of the fried rice from inside. That means either cockawoaches or rats in my book but what it really meant was a rather uncomfortable nights sleep. By the time I got to bed a bit later, Mand had laid the sleeping bag liner on the bed and erected the mosquito nets (I have no idea how) all over it and was sleeping pretty much fully clothed. All she needed was a respirator mask and a pair of gloves and she'd have looked like she was sleeping in a radioactive site. Up we got the next day and back on the boat, which was actually much bigger and had tables you could sit round. But as we were the last to arrive (again) it was all getting a bit crowded. This time we had to lug our own bags down the back to the luggage hold and that turned out to be our saviour. A floor space big enough to sleep six, so me, Mand, Kimbers, Nat, Rosie and Charlotte plonked ourselves down along with these two Austrian guys. A bit crowded, but you could sit down, lie down or get up and go for a walk if you wanted. Much dozing, card playing, reading, ipodding and a couple of beers later and we were there. Luang Prabang, the former capital and a World Heritage Site. Missing you all loads xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx