That night was spent celebrating Lauren's birthday and the end of both her and Logan's English teaching course and we set off the next day at 5.30am, after 45 minutes of sleep, for the first bus. 6 hours and 75 ticket inspections later and we're dropped off in the middle of a small town somewhere near the border – having no map, no guidebook and no clue between us, we hop in a tuk tuk and ask him to take us to Laos. This he does, and we manage to get passport photos (unsuitable for human viewing), American dollars and a stamp out of Thailand within 20 minutes. Next we hop on a longtail boat across the river to Laos, where we get our temperature checked, hand over our passports and $35, dump our bags in the corner and wait for our Visas over a Beer Laos in the wooden shack next door. Immigration is fairly laid back here. Our plan from this point is to stay in the border town, Huay Xai, for a night and then get the slow boat down the Mekong River (2 days) to Luang Prabang, a stunning city in the North and another UNESCO world heritage site. The slow boat is optional, you can get a bus in half the time of risk your life in a speed boat but we decide a couple of days cruising the river will be a lot of fun – turns out it’s mostly just slow.
Crossing to Laos
Slow boat
On the plus side, the 2 nights we spend between the border and our destination see us bumping into a friend from Pai and enjoying two of the best meals we've had in a long time. The second town, Pakbeng, is on an island and has developed especially for this route- it's reputably slightly dodgy and known for being a rip off but apart from the abundance of weed that would put Amsterdam to shame, the place is fine. All the same, Lauren exits the boat first and shoots off to beat the guesthouse race while Logan and I collect bags and within about 20 minutes of the boat docking, the town is practically full so we don't mess around and take the first room that's clean and secure. This happens to be a twin and not a triple but we're backpackers after all so after dinner and when the electricity goes off at 10.30, we simply push them together by torchlight and sleep across them. It's not the worst sleep I've ever had but a fan would've been nice...
Day 2 and we're rewarded with a far superior boat with airline style seats instead of wooden benches. It's all the same people doing the journey – a mixture of people and stories including 2 London girls who met as travel buddies online, A Parisian girl escaping a broken heart and a newly engaged couple who met Latin dancing in South America. o we sit together and play cards, listen to music and share beer and crisps for the next 7 hours. The journey is beautiful and random, with one stop where a dead fish and possum are delivered and another where 4 overloaded baskets of ducks and chickens are loaded onto the roof. It's not a good journey for vegetarians. We tiredly arrive in Luang Prabang at 5pm and after showering off the day's dirt (literally), we settle into a huge helping of local food, a 2 hour massage and the best sleep known to man. It's good to be here.
In the end we only spend 2 nights in Luang Prabang, it probably deserves a couple more but we don't have too long in Laos so after visiting the beautiful temple and exploring the town on bikes, we get an early bus to Vang Viene and my second session of tubing. For anyone who doesn't know what this activity involves, it's basically hiring the inside of a tractor tire, getting taken 5km up river and then floating back into town on one giant bar crawl. There are rope swings and games along the way and it's the most unique and fun way to spend a day in the sunshine! Despite the sacrifice of a few pieces of jewellery and 2 pairs of sunglasses to the river gods and the absence of our shoes from outside the bungalow door on our return, we had a ton of laughs and spent one more day just relaxing and recovering in front of the town's many TVs (for some reason, this place thrives on episodes of friends) before heading back to the borders and onto Chiang Mai, via Vientiane, on a cramped and long 20 hour bus trip. But that's just how it is and it's all worth it!
