LAOS - Nong Khiaw

After the marathon journey starting from Pai we finally reached our first destination in Laos. Top spot!

A walk out to nearby villages led us into the house of some friendly locals. In a party mood they wouldn't let us leave until we tried all 5 different pots of home made rice wine. Sweet, but not bad. They topped up the drinks with water from an old engine oil container - lovely! Luckily we didn't end up sick from it.

Cool riverside accomodation is easy to find. We stayed at the Sunrise Guest House, pictured here, run by a lovely young family.

THAILAND - Border Crossing into Laos
The tiring task of getting from Thailand into Laos. We had to catch an overnight bus to Chiang Kong on the border arriving at 4:30am, hang out in some tourist office/restaurant where they try to rip you off by indicating it's too difficult to get across the border to Huay Xai by yourself. Then had to deal with their grisly response to our stubborn refusal to accept their ridiculous advice, which is just another way to scam the unsuspecting tourist, the stupid farang. At the border we waited an hour or so till the immigration office opened at 8:30am. A short boat ride later and you are in another queue on the Laos side of the border waiting to process your Laos visa. Across to the foreign exchange office to pick up 3 million kip. A wad of notes so thick you almost needed to buy a backpack to store the cash.


The comfortable bus ride from Huay Xai to Luang Nam Tha, still under construction took 8 hours over a long, bumpy and extremely dusty road! We had unwittingly picked a broken seat, which required readjusting our butts off the metal rod back onto the cushion. Three Vietnamese jumped onto the bus just after dinner and were forced to wedge themselves in the stairwell in front of us in between sacks of rice and wheat. At one stage James had to rest his feet on the shoulders of one of the guys who fast asleep was oblivious to the worn leather smell. Mmmm!

THAILAND - Pai
'Doing nothing in Pai' - a quote on the front of a t-shirt of a fellow traveller taking advantage of the chilled feeling of Pai. Aaahh the serenity!


The cool and 'cosy' little cabins we stayed in while relaxing in Pai. Days were spent sleeping in, brunch, midday DVD viewing with lots of chilling out and eating in between.