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At 8.00 am this morning we were ready for our first border crossing, we are leaving Thailand for a while and heading to Laos. We had heard various horror stories about the immigration process but we passed through in no time. We firstly boarded a small boat to take us from Chaing Khong across the Mekong river to the Loas border town of Huay Xai. As you could see the town from across the river, this first part of the journey took about 2 minutes. We then handed in our passports and waited about half an hour before we got granted our 30 day Loas visas.

As we wanted to travel to the town of Luang Prabang today, we needed to book onto the "slow boat". This journey should take two days, with one night stay in a small town to break the journey up.

We were in the boat for about 9.00 am and straight away wondered if we had made the wrong decision. The wooden benches that were to be our seats for the next two days were tiny and extremely uncomfortable. After two hours of wait for them to cram as many people on the boat as possible, and numb bums, we were off. We managed to meet a few people and thankfully the scenery kept us occupied for a decent amount of the journey as it was stunning, green beyond anything at home, the camera doesn't give it justice.

At 6.00pm just before it went dark we arrived at the town we would all be staying in for the night, we checked into a guest house and went for some tea. Over tea we watched the storm roll in over the mountains, lightning in every direction, had a few beers and were back at the guesthouse before 11pm when the town power is switched off each evening.