The slow journey from Chiang Mai to Luang Prabang began on Saturday 12th November, supposingly being picked up from our guesthouse at 9.30 - 10am but it got to be more like 10.30am. Although we should have been used to this by now, as nothing in Thailand happens on time. Anyway the bus arrived and we had the grumpiest driver we had ever met, litterally chucking our bags in and slamming the door behind him .. uhhh get your handbags out!

We then proceeded on the 6hr journey to Chang Khong on the Thai border. On the way we had a couple of stops, one being the White Temple which was quite honestly stunning from the outside ( take a look at photos), as we walked towards the entrance at the bottom of the slope there were two security men with mircophones whos jobs were to make sure everybody went one way up the slope. A few people obvioulsy didnt realise it was one way and a few times we heard the men shout 'von vay Lady.. von vay Gentleman' ... i guess you had to be there to realise how hilarious it was to us. The inside of the temple seemed to a be a massive dissapointment compared to the outside, it was bleek in comparison.

The journey continued reaching our first nights accomodation in Chang Khong, surprisingly it was a lovely guesthouse (considering we had booked the trip in a package) with a swimming pool for an extra 50 baht each, we decided we didnt have enough time for swimming as it wasnt far off sunset. Dinner was served at 7pm, just the usual simple thai buffet with a banana for dessert.

We knew we had an early start the next morning in Chang Khong as we had bought an alarm clock from chiang mai market the day before.. a really nice but retro one. haha! The day started with breakfast at 7am.. Peter really enjoyed it .. Scrambled eggs on toast AGAIN. We departed at 8am and made our way to the 'Ferry' crossing, which we'd call more of a Canoe crossing. We had our departure cards and passports stamped and headed for the canoe.. it was really easy climbling in and out of the boats with both of our rucksacks.. NOT! The journey over the river was probably a measly 2 minutes .. ohhhh Hello Laos.. and it was as easy as that.

After FINALLY sorting our visas out on arrival, which can i say had no organisation or orderly queue system, the only words to describe it was complete mayhem. We made our way to the slow boat, unfortunaly we werent the first group there, so the majority of the best seats were taken. Luckily we grabbed a couple of seat towards the back i.e Car seats with no head rests. This was us for the next 7hrs with a couple of beer Lao at hand.

We arrived at the villiage of Pakbeng for the evening, around about 5.30pm, just as it were going dark. We had heard there was no electricity in the village and that people tried to help carry luggage but then ran away with it. Fortunatly we didnt witness any of this and had a pleasant stay.

Up ealry for the second leg of our journey to Luang Prabang, again hardly any seats left, we just got the last two at the back .. PHEW!! I know you might be thinking.. well what happens when theres no seats left.. basically your stood or sat on bags for the whole trip.. Unlucky to anyone who may have experienced this, but you should have got out of bed earlier. The second journey was about 8hrs until we finally reached our destination of Luang Prabang. By this time it was dark and we didnt have anywhere to stay, Peter is normally very good with maps but on this occasion he was terrible making us trek in a circle to a guesthouse which we couldnt find. Emma who we had met on the boat had already looked around a number of guesthouses and said they had all been full.. SMART! We eventually found one that was a tad above our buget but we obviously wanted a bed for the night, so we snapped up the last room.... WELCOME TO LUANG PRABANG...