Slow boat to Laos
I have finally arrived in Luang Prabang. Ore, I dont know if I should say finally, it was a nice boat ride on the mehkong river, but it was just 2 long days of traveling.
We left Pai on friday morning. It was round about 9 hours (I think!?) journey from Pai back to Chiang Mai and then up to Chiang Kong. When I woke up I was sick, and it just got worse and worse. Specially cuz the "VIP" minivan (I have noo idea why they are called VIP they are horrible) hade no suspencions, and it was just a rocky, curvy terrible road if you are allready feeling sick. In the end I was all green in my face, I could barely sit up in the car. It sucked. And then when we arrived we had to organize visa stuff and after that I could finally go to sleep.
The day after it was time to take the boat to Pak Beng in Laos. First the minibus took us to the river. And after we crossed the river which took us only round about 5 minutes we were allready in Laos. It was easy to get visa, except that they asked for one dollar more than what the hostel had told everyone, so no one had the correct money in USD and had to pay extra in Baht, which was off course more expensive. Anyway, it wasnt too bad. Then the hostel people asked us if we wanted to exchange to Laos money. No one knew how much Laos money was really worth so most people change money and found out later that they gave us waay to little money. So that was our first ripping off in Laos. After 6 hours on the slow boat, I was so sick and lied on the floor the whole way, we arrived in Pak Beng. Before we went on the boat they tried to sell us hostel accomodation for lika 400 baht, but when we arrived we found for 150, so it was good we didnt pay. But everyone in that town was after our money and after ripping us off. The hostel manage to rip me off on 40 000 kip, which is like 40 krones, just cuz it was my first time using the money and I didnt fully understand the value(they have different numbers on them, dont know why?)
Anyway.. The day after we took the slow boat again for 7 hours. It is a beautiful tour, the mountain and everything is really nice, but 13 hours with the same is just not too much fun. I was feeling better so I was happy anyway. And today we arrived in Luang Prabang. The first thing we did was to jump in a tuktuk to get to town. We did not realized that the town was just around the corner and he just drove us around it. Ripped of again. You got to love it..:) Anyway. We found a cheap nice guest house and we dont know for how long we will stay in this town.
I have no pics to put in today cuz Im having some technical problem, but I will fix that as soon as possible...
