Finally here

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Well the boat trip ended up taking 3 days. For the first 2 it was 11 hrs on wooden benches on the boat and then the last was 7 hrs on a bus which killed us as we were assured it would only take 3 hrs!! We spent the first night in a tiny town called pakbeng which is on the banks of the river, loads of guesthouses but electricity goes off as its so remote. The 2nd day we didnt reach the border before it closed so we got stuck in houxaiy ( or something like that) whcih as pretty much the same. Anyway eventually we crossed the border which was just a river! And just stepping back in to thailand you can see how much more westernised it is. Quite a relief. Even the lowest class buses here were the same standard as the ones elsewhere, except vietnam. Getting back in to chang mai is like going to london or somewhere with the high street shops and macdonalds etc etc. its quite nice though to have some normality back though and even nicer that everything is still lively and open after 11pm. In Laos everything shuts and goes quiet at 11 its strange( but really i have not a bad word to say about it) . We spent the first day here sleeping and not feeling bad about it as we have been here before. Yesterday i went on a cookery course which i have to say was one of the highlights of my trip. We got taken to a local market and did the cooking on an organic farm with all orgainc ingredients. In the open air, The best part about it was that we got to eat it all too!!

So i can now cook ( and eat!!):

thai green curry
tom yam (hot and sour prawn soup)
bananas in coconut milk (sounds simple but is absolutely divine)
spring rolls
chicken with sweet basil.

As andy atayed in chang mai i thoughtfcully bought him back a doggy bag ( mostly because i would have been sick if i had eaten it all!!) and also because i am a lovely girlfriend!!.

So today we are looking to have a thai massage ( we have had one in every country so seems only right that we try one here!) and buy some books we are flyin back to bangkok tommorow its only 10 pounds more to fly and as we have to take an overnight bus from there to the islands we think its justified!

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Photos

Loads a money
We just had to show what it feels like to be a millionaire (in kip,that is!)

The lovely boat
We had two solid days of this.