11th November 2009

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Annelien and I left pai taking a minibus to chiang krong and what a ride that was! The driver was a complete lunatic weaving round twisting mountain roads at a fenominal speed, over taking on blind bends, the g forces on your body going from hard left to hard right literally every 20 seconds for a good 2 hours before stopping for a toilet/sick break. Everyone kinda flopped off the 15 seater and fell to the ground still spinning. A kind german girl went around handing out travel sickness tablets which I've never needed before but felt unable to decline on this occasion. 3 hours later at 1.am we arrived at a guesthouse near the river boarder with Laos, the next country I'm visiting.

Got up and headed down to the boarder pier with some other guys we met on the bus, Josh from the US, Chris and Ray from Canada. They had been working as teachers in taiwan for years and were now on their travels again. They were due to check in in the Lao border town huay xia for a trip on the gibbon experience in the jungle. I had heard about the trip from the two Irish girls we'd met in pai, they were raving about it and everyone seemed very excited so I decided to check it out.

Crossing over the river into Lao was alot easier than I thought, 35 dollars for a visa and I was ready to change my Thai baht into 2 million Lao kip! (about 140 quid). Next stop was a guesthouse for the night and then off to the gibbons exp office where I was told I could join the next group out tomorrow with my American and Canadian friends. Ana decided that she would continue on into louange prabang by slowboat so I would be sad to see her go. That night we all went out for a big meal and drinks with alot of others from the guesthouse, it was great as there was a really diverse range of people all enjoying each others company. This lead to a very late night ready for an early morning rise to start the trips.

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