Since my last blog we have got the bus from Chiang Mai to the border, stayed there the night in a slightly dingy guest house and then went across the Mekong river into Laos. The plan was to get the slow boat down to Louang Prabang which takes 2 days with an over night stop. However we were spoken to by a travel agent who told us that because its the rainy season it can be dangerous on the river and could take more than 2 days as the boat has to stop in the rain and the dark, he also said the weather forecast was rain for the next few days....What a scare story!!! He advised us to get a 'VIP' overnight bus instead, so we paid a bit of extra money and booked onto it. We boarded the bus (Tom, me, and Kaylee and Andy who we've been travelling with since the trek) at 5.30pm, the first shock was that we had to climb over a load of bags of rice in the aisle, then there was a motorbike at the back, very random but quite funny!! Quite a lot of local Lao people had got onto the bus and off we went. The road was very windy and not in very good condition, also the driver was a bit of a loony so it wasn't the most comfortable of rides, but then not long into the trip several of the locals started to be sick very loudly!!! The little old lady sat in front of Andy and Kaylee decided to lie on the floor, which was fine untill she fell asleep and let go of her sick bag which started to go all over the floor right next to our feet!! I was not happy by this point and we stall had 12 hours to go!! So happy to get off in Luang Prabang! To make things worse we bumped into a man who had still decided to go for the boat and he told us the journey was fine with no rain at all!!

Anyway Laos is very beautiful and Louang Prabang is a very relaxed town. The currency is hard to get your head around, it is for me anyway!.. constantly asking Tom 'what's that in pounds?!'. 12000kip is about 1pound! Today we are planning on hiring bikes and going for a look around

Tom has put some pictures on his blog - http://blogs.statravel.co.uk/tomhook