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Ok so we havent got too much to tell you about this place other than its the place where we we are crossing the boarder from Thailand to Laos and catching the slow boat down the Mekong River to Luang Prabang. The four of us (me,Lau,Chris and Rob) got up early in Chaing Mai and went to the bus station to catch our 6.30am bus to Chiang Khong, the bus journey was another 6 hours north. We arrived at around 1pm and walked to the Mekong river as this is where you get stamped out of Thailand, cross the river and enter Laos, at this part of the country Thailand and Laos are actually split by the river. So after going through all the procedures to get our visa's sorted, we headed straight for the slow boat... only to find there is only one a day and it leaves at 11am so as you can gather we missed it!! Great!!!So now the four of us are stuck in a little village on the Laos boarder with nothing to do for a day so we found some cheap accomodation and set about drinking and playing cards. We then stumbled accross five Laos girls playing basketball in a small park, of course being the tourists we are challanged them to a game... and of course we won! It was fun though, and after around 40mins of drunken basketball we retreaed back to our accomodation for more drinking and cards which lasted until the early hours.
We woke the next day ready for our 9.30am pick up to take us to the boat jetty for our two day slowboat down the river. So we get to the boat and get on to get our seat which are the most uncomfortable seats you can imagine. They are basically planks of wood nailed together into a small bench...and we have got to sit on these for 2 days... Nooooooooooooo!! The scenery cruising down the Mekong is stunning and its definatly worth doing but after a few hours your arse really is numb so as you can imagine Laura set about orgainising the chairs so we could all lie down and watch a movie on the laptop, we come all this way to cruise down the Mekong and end up watching a film... Ha ha!! After 7 hours slow cruising down the river with the most amazing scenery of rolling lush green mountains we came to a Village called Pak Beng which is where we stay for the night before getting the boat again for a further 7 hours the following day. Pak Beng was a really small little village with nothing more than a handfull of guesthouses and eateries, we found ourselves a guest house with four beds in one room so we all shared which worked out really cheap. By the time we checked in it was fairly late so we headed out to a resturant for some traditional Laos food called Larp, its basically minced buffalo meat with spices etc, i really enjoyed it but Lau wasnt too keen so i ended up having both! After the food we grabbed some local whiskey and headed back to the guest house where we sat on the veranda played cards and drank until the early hours... again. The highlight of the evening was when an American guy came up the steep stairs to our veranda to ask us for a light... after telling us the most lame story you have ever heard, he decided to fall arse over tit all the way back down the stairs!! Hillarious!!
The following morning we headed back to the boat jetty for the boat, when we got there we discovered it was a different bigger boat but we struggled to find somewhere to sit until Laura saw a stack of matresses in the corner, so we climbed on them and ended up having the best seat on the whole boat for the remainder of the journey...well done Finch!! So we sat on this mattress in total comfort for next 7 hours watching the scenery as we slowly drifted down the Mekong to our next destination Luang Prabang.
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