Luang Prabang to Chiang Mai!
13.05.2009 - 14.05.2009
33 °C
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Asia 2009
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Firstly - we have had our first virtually full day of rain in 3 and a half months....hurray! You have no idea how much you miss rain, its a pain in the bum when your in the UK though! We had a great time in Luang Prabang, and left early yesterday morning on the fastest most dangerous speedboat in the world. It does say in the guidebook that the speedboats on offer are really dangerous and tend to flip over at the smallest things, but its either a 7 hour white knuckle ride in a speedboat or spend two whole days on the slowest (and safest) boat in the world, with a stop in the middle of nowhere! We decided to risk it! We were both terrified, we nearly got out just before it left - but decided we can both swim so its ok! We had to sit crossed legged in the smallest space ever for the first 4 hours, right at the back of the boat so we couldnt hear a thing! We put ipods in after a while, and we introduced Motown to the Mekong!
We stopped in the middle of nowhere for lunch, and swapped positions so we were at the front of the boat - more splashy but more leg room! We were in the blistering sun as well, but we managed not to get too burnt - chris burnt his knee for example! This was interspersed with random rain showers as well, so we spent half the time covering our bags up and getting soaked and the rest covering ourselves up so we didnt get burnt! We got to the border at 4.30pm, and it closed at 5pm - cutting it slightly fine. We managed to rush over the Laos border and get another short boat across the border where we had to get another visa sorted for thailand. Stressful journey and we were both glad that its all over now. We managed to cut a day out the schedule, but i dont think we will be doing it again in a hurry!
We stayed for one night in Chiang Khong, which is just on the Thai border, then we set off this morning on a 7 hour coach south to Chiang Mai, which is where we will be for the next four days!
Hope you are all well,
Lots of Love
Chris and Alex xx
Posted by chrisalex 06:04 Archived in Laos Tagged boating Comments (1)