Slow Boat

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The night before the slow boat we met up with a group of people that we knew from the Gibbon experience.We all went out for pizza and Beer lao. Which is only around $1.20 for a large bottle. Matt and one of the other guys from New Zeland found some Lao whiskey that had a cobra in the bottle. One had a cobra holding a huge scorpion in it's mouth, the other the cobra was holding another green snake in it's mouth. We all had a shot out of the bottle then Matt and some of the guys all attempted to eat the snake. Apparently it was really chewey though. Definetly wasn't expecting to be eating cobras here, I tried to chew one but it just wasn't that appealing. Next morning it was up early for the boat. The slow boat was quite an experience, first we got on the boat at about 9:30. We were one of te first people on so we got the deluxe seats, there were only 7 of them on the whole boat. That saved our butts for a day. The boat finally left at around 11:30. it wasn't as slow as we thought it would be. We had a group of 6 people and we all went together. They were serving icy cold Beer lao on the boat so time went by pretty fast. On the first night we stopped at Pak Beng. Our guesthouse we got was definetly not fancy. It was just a room with a bed and a mosquito net. We had a shared bathroom which was pretty nasty. At about 2:00am we woke up because we heard something crawling on the floorboards below us. they shut the power off at around 11:00 so we had to search for our torches. By the time we found them it was gone. But there was a bag with an apple that was on the floor that had moved a few inches across the room. Right when I was about to fall back asleep with my torch in my hand I heard crawling up the wall right by my head. I turned my light on just in time to see a big rat tail slip through the hole in the roof. I know it sounds like it was really disgusting, but once I knew it was a rat I could go back to sleep. Because at least it wasn't a snake. A few more times throughout the night we heard them and I turned my light on to see them scurry through the hole. It was definetly a true Lao experience. The next day we got up nice and early to get on the boat again. It was a n 8 hour trip the second day with no stops. Our guesthouse packed us sandwiches though, hopefully not rat meatwiches. And now here we are in Luang Prabang. It's really beautiful. The streets are lined with restaurants and bars. The one we went to last night was right in a huge garden, they have a taditional Lao barbecue they you can get also. It sounds a bit like a fondue so I think we'll be going there tonight. Also on the toilets there the two doors say "sit " and "stand", pretty specific instructions I'd say. Well now we're off to check out the sites here. Hope you're enjoying the snow!!! (well some of you)

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Photos

On the boat
this was everyone who had to sit on the hard wooden banches. We got the good seats only for the first half of the trip. For the second half that was us too, with the numb bums

Monks getting off
We had a few little stops to let local Laos onn of off the boat.