Greetings everyone from Laos! We arrived here two days ago after an awful journey! We left Chaing Mai and had to travel to the border to cross over into Laos which took us 5 hours by a minibus which was wasnt too bad but unfortunately Jenny had received some very sad news the night before that her cousin had died so it has been a difficult few days. However Jenny seems alot better now after the initial shock and we decided to carry on with our journey. When we reached the Thailand/Laos border it was closed as it was quite late so we had to stay over the night in a horrible little village that had nothing to do apart from sit in bars! We had to be up at 7 am the next morning though as we had to get on the slow boat to Laos. Well that was a day from hell! There was a rain storm that day and it rained and rained and rained some more! We all got absolutely drenched and so did all our belongings in the backpacks! It was a complete nightmare getting onto the oat as everthing was so wet and slippery. The boat was a wooden contraption that looked like it had gone out with the Ark and they managed to cram about 120 people on it which a little uncomfortable to say the least! We had to sit on wooden benches for over 7 hours until we reached the half way point where we had to stay over the night again. This place was also terrible and had swarms of insects everywhere! One guy said he woke to find a rat in his room! So the next day we had to be back on the boat again for the next part of the jouney to get to Luang Prabang. We were told to be on the boat for 9 am however they decided to leave at 11.30 am instead so we had to sit on the nice wooden benches for two hours for no reason! We finally got going and we still had another 6 hour jouney ahead of us! I was so tired as the place we had stayed the night before had no electricity after 11 pm so the fans went off and it was absolutely boiling! So we finally arrived in Luang Prabang at about 6 pm and we found a really nice place to stay as we thought we would treat ourselves after the boat ordeal! Luang Prabang has some of the most spectacular scenery i have seen yet. People had told us that Laos was out of this world but you have to see it to believe it. As the country was once part of the French Colony there is a strange mixture of French and Laos culture but it seems to work. I sometimes feel like i am in the south of France! The buildings have shutters on all the windows and large balconies that are drapped in wonderful plants and flowers. Oh and the food is fantastic! Freshly cooked french baguettes are on every menu and they are good! We went out for a few drinks the first night we got here so we just had a lazy day yesterday but we hired out a bike out each today and took a trip around the twon which was funny as neither of us have ridden one in a while! We are going to go to the night market tonight as it sells some fantastic local handicraft. We have booked a trip tomorrow to see the waterfall and visit a local village and to watch a bear and tiger show which should be interesting! I will keep you posted as to what we get up to next! Au Revoir for now! Sara xxxxxx