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After a good start to the adventure, it was time to leave Thailand, for the time being at least anyway and make our way over the border to Laos.
Knowing that it's better to get there early, we left the guesthouse at 8am for the 10 minute walk to the port only to be greeted by a huge queue for the Thai immigration - at least it was a queue.
After a quick hop on a boat across the Mekong river, incidentally the river we'll be spending two days on to make our way to Luang Prabang, we had arrived in Laos.
Immigration was awful! The worst I've ever experienced. People pushing in, no queue, no system, just people having a free for all. One person handing 10 passports to the immigration officer, another handing 15, not the best first impressions of a country, but alas, the boat wasn't schedule to leave until 11:30am so there wasn't a rush.
We bought our boat tickets and shortly after we were whisked away in a tuk-tuk to the slow boat departure port, where we waited and waited and waited. 12:00. 12:15. 12:30. We were told we were waiting for the other boat to fill up before we could depart (why, I don't know) but that filled up and left and we were still there until 13:00.
The other boat broke down later though, so it made me feel a bit better about the ordeal. They still arrived before us though!
The journey, or the first day at least, wasn't too bad. We arrived in Pakbeng as the day faded away and we greeted by touts offering guesthouses, which you can pay for in Thai baht. Miles away from the border but they still widely accept it - strange!
The village lives for people staying every night from the slow boat. Guesthouses, restaurants and shops. All aimed at the tourist awaiting day two of their journey.
Our accommodation was more like a garage then a room, but bags dropped we headed to an Indian restaurant we'd spotted on the climb to our guesthouse. Making Vikki happy is easy - buy her a korma!
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