Hello everyone

Im here to tell you about the slow boat ride down the mekong river! I am renaming it to "numb bum boat". Boy did my cheeks hurt! It all went wrong from the start. I bartered down the price foregoing the option of a cushion. i had a trick up my sleeve you see, i had a blow up cushion. That was until it burst haha! damn it! so everyone else is looking smug and i have to endure the most painful seat for 16 hours over 2 days!

Day 1

The boat was pretty big, soon get chatting to lots of people but i was pretty exhausted from the gibbon experience and there was just no room to go to sleep. so the day went by and i was pleased to get off with 2 sore cheeks! The views down the Mekong are stunning, all very green lush rain forests. we would occasionally stop off at villages along the way for people to get on and off!

PAK Beng was the most uninteresting place. we got a cheap room for 50p but the dinner was expensive. only a one nighter so you had to endure it! it will also be my one and only time i share a room. There was a small group of us, 3 frenchies, 1 us girl, 1 italian and another french boy. The language barrier was fun but we managed!

DAY 2

much the like the first, however the boat was smaller and there were double the amount of people. it was hard going 9 hours of being stuck in one position. and to top it all my cruise boat was sitting in the dock, with deckchairs URH! but you name it we had it on board, people, luggage, merchandise, livestock. it was crazy. it was interesting to see the local life go by all the villagers would come to see the boats arrival and departure. one man was very sick and the whole village were helping him on to the boat, was a hell of a sight. oh we got stuck on this day to and the blokes driving the boat jumped on in. it was all very tense there for a while. the scenery was much the same as the day before. though you cant complain because it was spectacular! the rains came down too but we all hunched down with macs on or in my case... sat on the floor! There was a small girl with her grandma in front of me and we had been blowing raspberries at each other for sometime. next thing you know 2 hours of my trip was spent playing scissors, paper, rock, tickling counting to 10 and other such things. was great fun. even though we both didnt know the same language we were laughing, was great. didnt realise though that most of the boat were watching and taking photos!

LOUANG PRABANG

so we arrived late in the evening and it was such a relief, short lived however as you get off the boat you are bombarded with people saying room, tuktuk. somehow i ended up in a tuktuk i didnt really want to be in with some of the people i met on the boat. i hadn't really been on my own since bangkok and i was depserate to be myself. so on arrival at a guesthouse i scarpered up the road to find the GH that stacey and jon were in. found it! booked in and it was heaven, peace and quiet.

On trying to download 1 page from the free internet hhhhhmmmm i met Casey from the US. he had been there a couple of days and we got chatting. we soon went ut for dinner and he took me for a lovely meal with a bottle. was so nice! then we went for some cocktails. I went home exhausted and pretty merry! was great to meet him. He wasnt to keen on the english so im hoping i changed his mind hehe.

couldnt tell you much about LP yet as arrived in the dark, but so far looks amazing!

love you all loads

Jo xxx