The lovely Laos at last!

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We crossed the river in about two seconds and then filled out some long winded forms to enter Laos and paid our money and handed over our dreadful out of date mug shots. After this we were loaded into a van type thing and were driven up to the river and given the hard sell on why it was better to take a bus than get the boat (If there were more than 80 on the boat they would have to take two and it was nearing capacity!) Eventually after quite a few Beerlao’s (Which as an aside I must say are luuurvvely!!!) we got on the larger than we expected slow boat and started our six hour journey down the Mekong to PakBeng. The scenery was breathtaking and the company on the boat was also pretty good so the journey passed quite quickly, we were very glad we had taken some advice and bought the 80p cushions from the guesthouse before we left though otherwise it might not have gone quite so fast! We arrived in PakBeng and watched our bags get carried off the boat in front of us while we were still on the boat! After Sick note chased after them and got them to wait for us we were very glad to have their assistance with them up the sheer rock to our room for the night. We spent the evening drinking Laos Laos (laos moonshine - read rocketfuel) and BeerLao eating buffalo curry in front of the Mekong with our new companions from the boat. A wicked day had by both!

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