We decided to book an organised trip to get us from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang, as for some bizarre reason it came out far cheaper than doing it ourselves.

A quick 5 hours in a mini van got us to the border town of Chiang Khong. We booked in with the other gaggle of 20+ tourists and tottered off to our free dinner. We felt brilliantly old saying no to free tequila and would have stayed smug if we had done the same again the next night.....

In the morning we were all ferried onto songathews to the border, signing out of Thailand before making the short bus journey over the Mekong and to huay xai just inside Laos. Not before the guesthouse owner got an impressive amount of commission out of travellers who didn't realise the exchange rate and info about Laos money he gave was a pile of bull.Once we had Laos visas at the other side we got another bus down to the long boats.... Interesting....

We seemed to arrive a lot later than others, cue 30 Brits attempting to squeeze into 20 very small seats.... Let's just say it was a *slightly* damp and rather cold 6 hours.....

We eventually arrived in packbeng around 6pm. Our guesthouse was an improvement on the night before (it had SOAP!!), but luckily it was dark enough for us just to dump our stuff and head in search of food.

We were with two other girls we met the night before and all went into a little restaurant offering us the world, and free whisky...... Let's just say Tash wasn't quite so impressed with the 'steak and chips' (ok I know we were idiots for going western but after that trip we wanted comfort) and got us discount and.... More shots..... Then on leaving blanka got us... Yes more shots. You can see where the night went....

Cue 7am and two girls with very sore heads heading down to the boat clutching boxes of egg fried rice for lunch. Utter surprise and happiness awaited as two of the Brits we had been talking to told us of a new, early boat we could get on which.... Wait for it.... Had tables!! (By now little victories were everything). It turned into a gorgeous day and we wasted away 6 hours laughing about how we thought buying a bottle of the evil whisky for 20 000 kip (£1.60...) the night before was an epic idea and playing cards.

By the time we got to Luang Prabang we had forgotten our sore heads and the first leg of the journey. It turned out the Brit guys were booked in with us at the next hostel so we made our way there, before discovering 15 000 kip noodle soup at the night market and promptly passing out at 9pm