The days seem to be flying past. Simon, OC and I took the slow boat from Chiang Khong down to Luang Prabang. It was a fun journey and we met a lot of very nice people on the trip. We now have a group of about 20 that we've been hanging around with since the boat trip and will continue to do so for a while.
The boat itself was basic to say the least. We left our guest house like sheep herded onto mini buses. They took us to the river where we got on a boat and headed across to Laos. Off the boat we then had to show our passports about 20 times to various people all claiming to be official. Filled out a whole raft of forms and finally we were packed, again like cattle, onto tuk tuks that took us to the slow boat.
The slow boat was peaceful but my arse hurt a lot after 7 hours of sitting on wood covered by a suggestion of a cushion. Ouch. The journey itself was cool though. We met Emma, Pete and Rory (UK), Tal (Israel), Elsa and Thomas (Sweden), Arwin and Martijn (Holland), Alex (US), Steff (Germany).
My Uno game was used a lot and we arrived at Pakbeng a good group of friends.
Pakbeng was messy as we had beer available in great supply... The next day the boat trip was a much easier journey. My arse was still numb from the day before so it was almost like I didn't feel the journey at all :) Although we had a series of interesting smells on the boat the second day. We were at the front of the boat lying on the floor which was surprisingly comfortable. Unfortunately, one of the drivers or assistants must have lived on a diet of dead dogs for the past week because the smells that were emanating from his arse were dangerously toxic to say the least.... Also, all the locals that packed on and off the boat seemed to be carrying recently caught cat fish which tend to smell a little bad after a couple of hours in the sun..... mmmm
We all got to Luang Prabang in great spirits and set about finding a guest house with 11 rooms available....
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