Chiang Mai - Chiang Khong

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After our full irish breakfast (that cost the same as our room for the night) we, regrettably, left Chiang Mai to head over to our next destination country, Laos. The 12 seater van picked us up at 12.30 on the dot but didn't end up leaving Chiang Mai until 13.15 after the driver tried to get another 3 people on the bus when it was already full. He even tried bringing an extra chair on! We refused and eventually left for Chiang Khong. It took about 5 hours in total, the journey was fine unlike the guesthouse where the van dropped us off. So we decided to look elsewhere, along with Simon and Edith (the french-canadians from the trekking trip). We found one just up the street for 150 baht, no TV but clean enough.
After dumping our bags we had burger and fries (couldn't face fried rice or pad thai yet again....) and went for a walk. Chiang Khong is a bit run down really, nothing to do, well at least we thought so! Baz saw a guy getting a tattoo and dragged me in to take a look. Forgot to mention that 12/11/08 was a national holiday in Thailand so there were a lot of celebrations, fireworks, bangers and makeshift boats being set off in the river...pretty cool.
Anyway, back to the tattoo place, no, we didn't end up getting one, but we ended up drinking with the owner and his friends and going to the nightclub and then back to his shop, left about 3.30am, bit tipsy from the whisky and coke we'd been drinking all night! Thought it would be a quiet night but one of our best nights so far! York (the owner) Ton and his friends were great and made us feel really welcome.

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