Hello from Laos! (written by Holly as Matt still hasn't mastered the art of touch typing)

We arrived in Luang Prabang yesterday after a 3 day epic journey from Chaing Mai in Thailand. It was worth it, but we are so tired!! From Chiang Mai we took a mini bus for 6 hours to the very north of Thailand just opposite the Laos/Thailand border which is separated by a river. As we had signed up with a tour, we already had accommodation booked for the first night with dinner and breakfast thrown in. Our accommodation was pretty basic (bamboo huts with a shared outside bathroom area) but we got to meet some really nice people. The following morning we all got up early and had scrambled eggs on toast with coffee (Matt was so excited it was ridiculous) and then went down to the river to cross it to get in to Laos. The bank of the river was really wet and muddy and we were all slip slopping along it in our flipflops and shorts - it must have looked ridiculous! Of course, I was the only one to fall flat on my back in the mud! Luckily, my backpack is now so full, it acted as a cushion and protected me so I escaped with a cut knee and bruised arm and legs covered in mud! We took a speed boat to cross over to Laos immigration which was an adventure in itself! It was full of western people all getting overcharged, losing their passports and generally just getting angry and frustrated with the immigration guys. We were lucky as we had given our passports the previous day (risky) to get them stamped so just had to pay ($35 when other nationalities had to only pay $30, unfair!) for the visa and then left. We left so many people there arguing, it was horrible.

We were then taken to a shop (they sold Oreos, we were happy) to stock up on food for the boat journey and it was only then that we realised we were in another country! However, they take all currencies here, Thai baht, American dollars, Laos kip and we even knew one guy that paid in pounds, they will take any currency! We had to wait over an hour for the boat and this was perhaps the funniest part of the trip. There were about 100 of us all waiting and this little Laos guy came from nowhere and started calling everyone together and ordering us to be quiet. He was like a really bad teacher that noone wants to listen to. He told us that the boat journey would be awful and there were 100 of us but only 80 seats on the boat. He then said that when we got to the first stop that evening, there would only be really expensive hotels to stay in and we would get ripped off, there was no electricity and our bags would most probably be stolen from the boat by the untrustworthy local people! It would surely take 10 hours to get there on the first day and maybe 15 hours on the second day (we had been told 6 on the first and 8 on the second!). He then told us that for an extra 20 quid, we could upgrade to a mini bus to take us to Luang Prabang - that money was on top of the money we had already paid for the boat journey! It was so obviously a con, but literally half the group chickened out and got the bus! Us hardcore travellers held on fast though, and said we would prefer the boat!

It turned out that it wasn's so bad at all - the boat was cramped but we all got a seat and decided that drinking vodka was perhaps the only sane way to get us through the experience. When we arrived at the first overnight stop (6 hours later) we had to take our luggage off the boat in the dark (no one had stolen our bags - funny that!) over the smallest plank ever to get on to the shore which was really muddy sand. Luckily we didn't slip that time! Our guesthouse was horrendous (we were greeted by a massive spider in the bathroom, I almost had a seizure and so did Matt when he tried to catch it and it ran off!) but we still fell fast asleep after the day on the boat and all the vodka!

The following day, we were told to catch the boat at 9.30am for our last day of the journey. As we got to the boats, one was pulling away full of all the people that had got our boat the previous day!! We started to panick, but there was a second boat waiting for us which was almost empty. It was so empty we literally had a seat to ourselves (there were about 20 people on board) and were all feeling really smug that we got the better boat and all the others were cramped in. This was not to last for long as after about an hour, we met up with the first boat and were made to all cram on to it. The health and safety guys in England would have had a field day - there were people sitting on the floor, everyone all crammed in ahhh it was horrible! We were lucky to get a seat at the back with some friends we made and again, passed the day by drinking vodka and playing cards and about 8 hours later arrived at Luang Prabang.

We managed to find a nice guesthouse here and went out with our friends for a really nice pizza dinner in the town. It's a really cute little town, hardly any traffice and really peaceful and chilled out. It's literally on the river so there's some beautiful scenery to look at and a few temples to wander around. Yesterday (our first full day) we got up late after a well deserved lie in (the boat really had knackered us out, or perhaps it was the vodka: we're not sure!) and got some breakfast at a 'Scandinavian Bakery' where they had real bread which we miss as a lot of the bread in Asia has been quite poor. We then decided that we really did deserve a massage, so went and found a nice place and both got a back massage which was amazing! Matt's never had a proper massage before so it was a really nice experience for him too. The place was really clean and professional and we paid about 5 pounds each for a full back, neck and shoulder massage and I also got an Indian head massage too - wow! That evening we went out to a lovely place for some dinner with friends - a great open air restaurant lit up by candles and fairy lights and we enjoyed a nice bottle of red wine - something we haven't had for a long time so it was even nicer. After that we went on to Luang Prabang's most 'chic' club (we don't want to give the illusion that this place is like Ibiza or anything, this is the only club here!) and enjoyed some drinks outside. There is a curfew in Laos of 11.30pm so everything closes really early and it kind of puts a dampener on the evening. We were told that the only way to stay out later was to go to a bowling alley (random, we know!) which stay open until 3am and serve alcohol. Very weird. We declined and went home to find our gueshouse all shut up for the night, we felt really bad knocking on the door and waking them up, it wasn't even midnight!

We are now trying to decide what to do next. Luang Prabang is really, really nice and it's a lovely little town but there's not really loads to do here and we are already getting itchy feet to do something new. You can go out and do trips and things but most of them are elephant trekking which we have done or rafting which we have also done so we think we will save some money and wait until the next place. We will probably book a bus for tomorrow to Vang Viene which is 5 hours south of where we are now. This place is meant to be the party capital of Laos and we're not really up for that but hopefully there will be soemthing new to see and we will enjoy it. We'll write again soon, lots and lots of love Holly & Matt xxxxxxx