It was an early rise this morning with breakfast at 6.30am, as we were boarding a boat at 7am that was taking us to the Thailand border, up the Mekong River. This was going to take us two days on this boat to reach the border with an overnight stop at Pak Beng.

While we were having breakfast at the hotel, the morning march of monks walked past at the corner of the road. Every morning in this town at 6am the monks march the streets in single file and collect food that the locals cook for them, and then the monks go back to their temples to bless the people. As it was an early ceremony we thought we weren't going to get to see this but we were surprised when the march came right passed the hotel, so managed to get some photos.

Our boat for the next few days was quite cute, it was a family owned boat that had a seating area, kitchen and their living quarters were at the back. We all couldn't sit on one side though because it would tip so we had to make sure we were evenly spaced out haha. All 9 of us fell asleep for the first few hours until we stopped at the Tham Ting caves, we payed 20,000 kip which is roughly £2 to walk up some steps and see what we could actually see from the boat, I wasn't too impressed. The caves were nothing like the ones we saw in Halong Bay, but it was only a 5 minute stop so it wasn't too bad.

I then 'attempted' to catch up on my blog... I have 9 days of this trip to write and I'm gutted I haven't been able to keep it up. After writing close to everyday in 4 months, I'm annoyed that I haven't been able to do the last month of my trip :( I got 3 days written this morning, which still meant I had 6 to do from the Vietnam part. It wasn't the quickest of boats and the engine made such a racket, everyone was in a totally zombie state, chillaxing and catching up on sleep.

Charles had estimated that we would be on the boat until about 5pm but we eventually arrived at Pak Beng for our overnight stop at 6pm. So it was a long boat journey from 7am with only a 5 minute stop. 11 hours to be precise. I had a 2 hour snooze from half 2 till half 4 which was affa fine because I was fed up with my blog by this stage. My tummy hadnt been right all day so something that I ate yesterday certainly didn't agree with me.

Tonight was my turn to have a room to myself but it always seemed to be my turn when we had a 1 night stop. It was fine though and especially when my tummy was playing games again. I decided not to go out for dinner and just spend the evening in the hotel, because the cramps were really sore and food was the last thing I wanted. This wee village had one main street and was basically just a stop over place where people stayed on their way through to Thailand. It didn't look like I was going to miss out on anything, having a quiet night in. The only thing was that it had no wifi, no phone reception or no tv so it was my music or a film on my iPad.

Nikki and Lauren were keen to watch Bridget Jones on my iPad so while they were out for dinner I just chilled in the room, had a shower and watched Coyote Ugly on my phone when I waited for them to come back. When they came back they just wanted to go to their bed, which suited me fine as I just wanted to watch the end of Coyote Ugly and sleep too.

I Really do not enjoy having ill days while travelling, it's ten times worse when your not in your own home :( Let's hope it passes quickly!!! xxx