After three short days in Chiang Mai it was time to say goodbye to Thailand and head over the border to Laos. There are several ways to do this (18 hour bus or a flight) but we decided to take the boat. This meant we had to catch a 6 hour minivan ride from Chiang Mai to Chang Khong at the Thai Border. We spent the night here in a tiny little wooden cabin before getting up bright and early to get a tuk tuk to the border crossing. A few forms and a couple of queues later – we had arrived in Laos!

That wasn’t the long part of the journey, that part was waiting for us when we boarded the “Slow Boat”, so named because it takes two days to cruising along the Mekong River to reach Laos. The first day was really fun, we had a table seat and it was sunny so was the perfect comfortable journey to sit and watch the scenery go by. We were only on there for about 5 hours before we arrived in Pak Beng. A tiny village on the side of the Mekong that caters to Slow Boat tourists. We walked the main street which took about 10 minutes before settling in at a bar to have our first Beer Lao.

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