Boat Trip!!

We finally had to drag ourselves away from the beautiful seclusion of Bamboo Nest and make our way into Laos! Our visa for Thailand was about to run out, otherwise we could have stayed there forever.

We got on a proper 'local people' bus and it took us down to Chiang Kong so that we could get a boat across the Mekong into Laos. This was all detailed in the Lonely Planet and had been confirmed by lots of people so we were very confident that we knew what we were doing. But no...

When the bus got close to Chiang Mai it stopped and a bunch of guys tried to tell us to get off but we were having none of it and continued stubbornly to Chiang Kong. When we got to Chiang Kong it became apparent that we should have done what the strange men said and got off earlier as there was now no river crossing to Laos and we needed to take the brigde. So we got a stupidly expensive Tuk Tuk back to the men and their bridge.

We crossed over the Friendship bridge and although it was a little slow it was reasonably easy to get into Laos.

We stayed the first night in Huay Xai, which is a nothing place. I didn't warm to it and it was the first time that we felt the need to use our own sheets so that we wouldn't get bed bugs. Was a bit manky.

some people on the boat

The next day though we were out of there!
We booked a 2 day slow boat trip to Luang Pranbang. The boat was really very nice, it was much more comfortable than I thought it would have been.

There were a lot of fallangi (the Laos word for annoying tourists) and the gap year ones were all getting drunk at the back of the boat. I thought this was a bad idea as the toilets were a scary little wee filled hole on a rocky boat. No one should attempt this, especially when drunk!

The scenery was ridiculously beautiful, we saw big pink water buffalo and a dead pig. There was a German-American man on the boat who was amazed that Laos had 'horned mammals'.

We stopped over night in a place called Pak Beng. This was a really, really cute little street/village. It was very friendly and it was here we introduced ourselves to LAB. A Laos dish with lots of mint, salt and herbs in. It was good, except mine had tofu in. Tofu is the most pointless food in the world. It's like eating watery rubber.

Pak Beng in the morning

We had a good night here and the next morning we got back on the boat to Luang Prabang.