La La Laos Land

G'day folks. New day new country. I say new day, I mean new few days because it took that long just to get anywhere. Day 1 left Chiang Mai to go to border (Thai/Laos) on bus, Day 2 crossed border in POURING RAIN (absolutely soaked, took about whole journey for my trousers to move from wet to damp in the drying out process) and hopped onto the 'slow boat' up the Mekong river. It was slow. Stopped over at some little village that seemed to exist for the pure purpose of housing us boaties for the night. Pretty dire nights sleep on mattress that turned out to be made of wood. Day 3 on the slow boat again, this time was upgraded so some people had seats that had clearly been half-inched from a bus, though we had to sit on more wooden seats. Laos - comfy it aint. Piccie (slightly blurry, still not got hang of this modern tech) is of some of us 'slow boaters' (l-r: UK Harry, Argi Dolo and Ozzi Jane) powering on through the journey with the aid of dipping pineapple in our teacups of Beer Lao, classy we are. Scenery pretty nice on way (despite rain rain rain) and then finally arrived at destination Luang Prabang.

Obviously the first thing we did was get a pizza, then head off down to get some mojitos (yayayay), and later onto a loverrrly spot called the Vietnam Bar (I really hope Vietnam is nothing like this place), which was nice. Currently living in a kind of bizarre 'slow boat world' where everywhere we go it seems that everyone we met on the boat is there too, or they are people met millions of years ago in different places (couple of guys who also did Challenger in Isle of Wight are here too - bizarre). Went to see this waterfall yesterday (see los picturos on rightos) so spent time avoiding leaches splashing about there for the day - awesome.

Today is cultural day and are going to hire some bikes to go around, though so far only managed breakfast (brunch) and to come on internet, hmmmm. But true to form I did get lost this morning so already had a walk around more of the 'city' than intended. Happy days.