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Published: November 18th 2007
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After all the partying, shopping and outdoor activies in Chiang Mai I was feeling a bit exhausted, so it was time to head to Laos to chill out for a bit. The cheapest and easiest way to get to our next destination, Luang Prabang was to take the slow boat. The other options were to fly (too expensive) or take the speedboat (way too dangerous - apparently it crashes most weeks!!). To get to the Laos border we took a minibus with some other westerners and ended up making good friends with two English girls, Sophie and Pippa and an American guy called Matt. It took most of the day to reach the border town of Chiang Khong, so by the time we arrived the border was closed, so we stayed overnight in a guesthouse with Sophie, Pippa and Matt and ended up drinking our last Changs (Thai beers) for a couple of weeks!
The next day we all got up bright and early and waited for our guesthouse to sort out transfers to the border. The night before the girl at our guesthouse had tried to get us to pay 100 baht so that she could get our passport
stamped in advance. Since this only takes about 20 minutes of queuing we decided not to pay her for something we could easily do ourselves and she got in a bit of a strop with us. Because of this, the next day she made us all wait until last, so we didn't make it to the border til about 9am, so by the time we crossed into Laos there was a big queue of people trying to get a visa.
When we finally managed to get our visas sorted and reached the travel agents that had organised the slow boat, they again made us wait while they tried to sell us a speedboat ticket. There was no way I was paying an extra 10 quid to risk my life and everyone else agreed with me so all of our group declined. Again we were kept waiting and by the time we reached the boat we were almost the last people on!! Unfortunately the boat only had 70 seats and there were about 120 people on the boat, so me, Kim, Matt, Sophie and Pippa ended up in the engine room where there were not very many windows, no seats
and we had to put up with the noise from the engine which was deafening!!! We tried to make the best of a bad situation and sat on our cushions playing charades and card games, but it was still the worst journey I've had yet!! There were loads of other people also stuck in the back with us trying to sleep on a big pile of rucksacks and it was just so cramped that it was impossible to get comfortable. I felt most sorry for a local Laos woman and her baby, who just had so little space and we right next to the engine. We all moved round to try to give her more space, but I still felt terrible. Amazingly the baby sat quietly the entire time and didn't cry once - I guess they're used to a hard life here in Laos and that journey is nothing out of the ordinary to them. It was humbling watching them really - a Western family would have reacted in a VERY different way!! Thankfully we reached Pak Beng, our overnight stop after just 5 half hours - the travel agent had told us it would take 10 hours!!
The second day of our boat trip me and Kim got up really early as we were determined to get a good seat - there was no way we were sitting in the engine room again!! Luckily today there was no need as they had given us two boats - hurray!!! Everyone was so happy you'd think we were sat in 1st class!! I'm almost glad we had the bad experience the day before as it made us so appreciative of this new boat. As we'd gotten up so early me and Kim had the best seats on the boat - comfy leather ones right at the front, away from the noisy engine!! This time the trip was an amazing experience - we spent the whole day drinking and soialising with the rest of the people on the boat and met some lovely people who we arranged to meet up with again that night in Luang Prabang. It was great to actually be able to see the scenery this time - Laos really is beautiful!!!
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