Thailand and then a Slow Boat Down The Mekong

We have arrived in Laos.

After a good couple of days in the-always-interesting Bangkok we headed once more onto a sleeper train. Time to see how the Thais do it! It was much more organised surprisingly, with proper seats set up and attendants who made your bed up once we had got going, there was even somewhere to store your bags rather than squeezing them in the bunk with you.

However, the ride was a little more.... erratic?? Certainly it felt a lot more like a rollercoaster ride than the Malaysian train and as a result I constantly felt like a was going to roll out of the top bunk into the aisle. This made relaxing and falling asleep a little difficult. But we both gtot some sleep at least and arrived only a couple of hours late in Chiang Mai.

Chiang Mai is brilliant. Its not very big, and easily navigable on foot and we stayed at a very nice place just out of town, on the east side of the river - The Imm Eco. Its was very green with lots of exotic plants everywhere and we had a swimming pool.

On our first day we got given some sctratch cards in the street by an Maeircan girl and a Belgian guy. Lo and behold Marie won the Star Prize and all we had to do was go to the office and fill in some forms and watch a tourism presentation. It was obviously going to be some sort of timeshare company trying to sell their business but we had nothing planned and knew what to expect, and besides we could have won a laptop!! We didn't, and it was a "Holiday Club" promotion. The people though were actually really friendly and the guy in charge was from Dagenham! They gave us a free T-shirt and some advice on where locals go (the reservoir!) and we caryed on our day, getting some lunh in a nice cafe around the corner - somewhere we would not have even seen if we hadn't gone along to the office.

We stayed for 4 days, during which we didn't go to the reservoir, or on any other tours - "Monkey World" and "Tiger Kingdom" didn't really appeal.

Next day, Marie did her massage course and I spent the day wandering around town exploring and getting our bus tickets to the Laos border sorted. When I went back to pick up Marie from the massage centre, her and her teacher werwe rolling around a bit and not working very hard at all! They had a had a good day though and Marie got a certificate. We celebrated by having some cheap cocktails in a bar nearby and then having a Meze meal which was enormous.

On Thursday we decided to relax and hang around near the hotel, and spent the day swimming in the pool and eating ice creams from the posh ice cream parlour down the road.

We were up early on Friday as our bus was at 8.30am. We breakfasted and caught a tuk-tuk to the station and again, it was very well organised. The bus left promptly at 8.30 and our bus attendant handed out water and biscuits to us all.

It was 6.5 hours to the border town of Chiang Khong, almost as north as you can go in Thailand. We had booked oe night at a guesthouse there - Bannrimtaling - which wasonly a couple of minutes walk from the bus stop and we found was run by a guy from Florida called Don. We was very friendly and showed us our room which was only three pounds fifty pence per night. It was good though, with a little terrace overlooking the Mekong which forms the border. We could see and occasionally hear Laos from over the water.

After the journey we were tired out and ate and drank at the guesthouse, venturing out only to the local 7/11 for the ATM. It was a nice little town, but we had to leave the next day. For a couple of quid Don could arrange the whole crossing for us next day and get us on the slow boat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang, we decided it was worth it as by the time we paid to tuk-tuks and the boat over the river crossing we would have spent almost that much anyway.

It was definately worth it as the crossing is bit of a free for all. The leaving Thailand bit was okay, stamp passport, get on boat- no problem but arriving on the Laos side was a bit chaotic. Unfotunately, because everyone wants to get the boat to Luang Prabang everyone goes over at the same time, about 9am, which meant that the visa office on the other side is thrown into chaos as about 70 westerners all bumble their way through and Laos is very laid back, so urgency is not exactly a priority for the immigration people. I was the very last person to get my passport stamped into Laos from the scrum of people - typical!!

Still, because we had someone guiding us through the whole thing (thanks to Don) we easily got to the slow boat and after some initial confustion about the boat already having gone ("Really?? there a lot of people still here???") we got on the boat heading to LP.

The boat was good although we got numb bums, there was some lovely scenery and people pretty much all the way down the river, most either washing or panning for gold, coming from little villages nestled in the hills.

It involved stopping off at the village of Pak Beng for the night, which is truely the middle of nowhere. We went to a guesthouse recommended in Lonely Plant which would have been great apart from the bed bugs, and the shower didn't work. Still, we had an amazing Indian meal in the village and it was great introduction to Laos.

Next morning it was back on the boat for another 10 hours, which took us all the way to LP, arriving at dusk. We made our way to a nearby guest house - again putting faith in the Lonely Planet - and this one was much nicer. We're going to stay for a few days.....