After an awesome nights sleep we found an Internet cafe with free wifi so I finally got to update my blog onto the net. Lucky for all of you!

Today we are in transit from Chiang Mai in Thailand to Huay Xai in Laos and will complete the Thai-Laos border crossing. Our group is separated into two mini busses and Tony, Lindsay, Pip, Paap, Long and I are in one bus and John, Lisa, Sabrina, Steve and Bern are in the other.

Thank god it was not a boring bus trip....We first stopped at a cashew nut factory about 2hrs from Chiang Mai. They use a labour intensive process to extract the nuts from the flower, it was interesting to see how it was done but don't ask me to explain it! We also go to try the different varieties of nuts on offer, I chose sesame coated cashews! So good!

We then travelled about another hour or two to the Wat Rong Khun or White Temple. This temple was like no temple we had visited before. For starters there were heads hanging from the trees and a statue of predator buried to his chest in the garden. The temple looked quite new and was pure white with silver detailing. Dragons, hundreds of sculptures of people's hands under a bridge, skulls and Keanu Reeves in the Matrix (yes, you read that right) also featured in and around the temple. Weird huh? I should have found out a bit more about what it all meant, maybe next time.

Next stop was the border crossing another hour and a half away. We had to say Long was our friend and couldn't walk with him which made for interesting times for some of the group. But we got through without much fuss and hopped on a boat across the Mekong to enter Laos.