As I'm writing this I'm not in the best of spirits...I lost most of my photos because of a damn virus on my memory card from my camera and on my memory stick which I was using as a back up incase I got viruses! Ha! So other than those I've uploaded to this site I'm afraid you won't be seeing anymore unless I can find a computer whizz to put it right or you want to view them in the little screen on my camera!

OK rant over! I'm horribly out of date but my camera dying has made me realise I really should try and catch up with my travel blog so I have at least some memories of what I've done!

So we had trekked it up mighty fine in Chiang Mai and I really did love every minute of it. We had a bus to Chiang Kong at 8pm that night and didn't arrive at the accommodation until about 2am, so tired!

Day 1

The next day we made it over the border into Laos (literally a tiny little boat takes you over, fill in a few forms and voila you have a visa!) and then we were on the speed boat which would take us 6 hours to get to Luang Prabang instead of the slow boat which would take 2 days!

The speed boat was so funny - they give you a helmet which a much needed viser for the wind and rain, and I had absolutely no space for my legs, my knees were huntched right up to my chest! Thankfully Kelly got the girl in front to swap places with me so I can stretch my legs out on top of all the luggage they'd put at the front of the boat so thats how we spent the next 6 hours! I'd read in the Lonely Planet that loads of people die from taking the speed boat but we weren't scared - it was like a ride! The scenery was pretty nice too and I hoped that our boat driver could see all the debris in the river and avoid it accordingly! Which he did...

We finally arrived with stiff legs and red cheeks from wind burn and then trekked 7k with our backpacks on because we had no money to pay for a tuk tuk! It was so far I can't even tall you about the sweat. Also people kept telling the town was just down the road only 5 minutes! 7K later we decided to trust nobodys directions whice in Laos! We found a really grotty place to stay which was about 2 quid and then went for a really nice dinner where Louise had the 'best chocolate cake of her life' and then booked ourselves on a day trip for the next day to go and see the huge waterfall and Buddah cave temple.

Day 2

So we got a boat to the Pak Ou Cave which took about 2 hours to get there and was pretty much a small cave filled to the brim with Buddah statues. There must have been thousands of them! We stopped off at a few villages down the way where they try and get you to try traditional Laos Whiskey at 9am! That afternoon we went on another trip to the Khuangsi waterfall. But apparantly (and we know this now!) what we thought was the waterfall was in fact a smaller version and we were supposed to carry on a bit further down the path to see the big Momma. We got caught up at the first waterfall though because the water was pretty much turquoise and so beautiful and you could swing off a rope into the water and we convinced Kelly to jump off the top of the waterfall. The 3 of us were such girls, it took ages before we jumped off, people must have thought we were such losers! Still I've never jumped off a waterfall before so thats something to add to th experience list!

We had a bus booked that night to take us to Vang Vieng and we were worried we were going to miss it because 2 Dutch girls from our trip didn't come back from the waterfall. Had they drowned? No - and after 45 minutes of waiting for them they sauntered over saying they didn't realise we were waiting for them and that they weren't coming back with us. Grrr! We somehow persuaded the rest of the guys on the trip not to go and see another whiskey village and that we had to get back to get our bus. Thankfully they were lovely and agreed and before long we were back, booked somewhere to stay at lightening speed and made the bus with time to spare hurray!

It was pretty much the worst bus ride ever! They played music so loud and sat locals on plastic chairs in the asile to fill up the bus. Everytime we had to get off we had to scramble over 10 guys and their chairs in the middle! There was no chance of getting any sleep because of the loud music - it was like 2am! Once we got to Vang Vieng we found our villa and yay it was really nice! We'd actually managed to book a nice place to stay! Hurrah!