Our original plan was to head straight from Bangkok down south to Thailand’s beaches, given that we thought the weather would be too hot or too rainy in the north. We did have some rain in Chiang Mai, but it really wasn’t as hot as we had imagined (though Roland might disagree ;)
We had been hearing so much great stuff about Laos (that it’s really cheap, really beautiful, like Thailand was 25 years ago, etc, etc), we decided it would be a shame not to go, considering we were so close.

So to get there, we hopped on a slow boat down the Mekong!

Contrary to our usual DIY style, we bought a ticket through our hostel for a bus ride up to the Laos border (5 hours), accommodation for the night, and the ticket for 2 days on the slow boat to Luang Prabang. While it was certainly a bit more expensive than doing it ourselves (though probably only a few dollars), it was a good way to meet a few people on the bus ride up.

The bus ride itself was quite pretty, through the green hills of northern Thailand. I was regretting leaving Thailand so quickly, after only seeing Chiang Mai in the North, but we can’t see everything…

At around 5pm , and after a little stop at a market for some food (including a tasty crepe with a cooked egg on it and sweetened condensed milk – surprisingly good!), we arrived at a pretty nice guest house. Because the Lao border is only open til 5pm, we had to spend the night on the Thai side and do the crossing in the morning.

The crossing turned out to be rather a long process…After a quick brekkie and lots of waiting around (along with the 25 or so other people doing the same thing as us) we were herded in to a van and driven the 3 minutes down the road to the Thai immigration control. They stamped us out and took our departure cards and we headed to these tiny rickety little boats that took us across to the Lao side of the river.

Final Chips before the boat!! (turned out to be only the last chips before the 5 minute ride across the river. Phew!)

The little boats weren’t particularly stable!

But we did make it safely across!

On the other side was the Lao immigration where we filled out forms for our visas, paid the fee (30 USD for Roland and 42 for Kath- the most expensive of all the countries!?), went over to another booth to get stamped in, hopped in a tuk tuk down the street to where the boat leaves, gave them our passports, waited while eating tuna sandwiches, and finally they said we could get on the boats.

Roland passing his big bag up to the tuk tuk driver (it’s aways the heaviest!):

Walking down to the boats:

Our home for the next 2 days:

To get on to the boat we had to walk over a pretty unstable plank that ran from the shore to the boat. I was sure I was going to fall in with all my bags, but everyone safely made it on, despite the mocking of one of the Lao guys working on the boat.

Leaving behind Huay Xai:

We had heard that in the busy season, the boats are packed like sardines, but being the “green season”, we had a bit of room.

The first day was about six hours, and we spent the time chatting, playing cards, and watching the scenery…

We saw many people on little wooden boats, as well as giant logs and other debris in the water:

We passed lots of little villages, stopping at a few to pick up boxes and bags of rice, fish and other assorted freight:

By the end of the ride everyone is sprawled out, beer in hand:

We arrived in Pak Beng around 6pm, where we found a little guesthouse and had some dinner overlooking the river.

The next day, we were back on the boat for a lot more of the same scenery, and it was another six or seven hours to our arrival in Luang Prabang.

Roland says he could even manage another couple of days on the boat, but for Kath, two days was enough. It was very beautiful and relaxing, but a little sore on the bum.

Roland taking it easy:

We arrived in Luang Prabang just when it started to rain, and we rushed into a tuk-tuk which took us to the guesthouse where we stayed for a few days before heading north to Muang Ngoy… but that’s another story, and we’ll try to put it on soon!