(Day 13)
We woke up way too early (about 5 am) in order to catch the 6 am bus to Chiang Kong which is a Thai city right on the border of Laos. Today is the day we were to cross the border into our next country, the beautiful Laos.
Getting across the border was much easier than expected. We paid 350,000 Laotian kip for a visa (it is 8,100 kip to the $USD).
We had a decision to make at this point. Our choices were to either head north to Luang Nam Tha and do some jungle trekking, or to head straight to Luang Prabang via a slow boat. After some debate and some differences of opinion, we made a democratic decision to head to Luang Prabang on a slow boat.
We took a Tuk Tuk to the pier which gave us some time to have some sight-seeing of Laos. It was definitely different than Thailand. Everything seemed much slower and much more simple. People seemed poorer, yet smiled more often. My initial impression of Laos was definitely a positive one.
We got to the pier and bought slow boat tickets for 220,000 kip.
The boats went down the mocha latte-colored Mekong river. It was definitely beautiful, but it was much much colder than we had expected it to be in South East Asia. None of us brought warm enough clothes, so after 7 hours, we felt like Loyd and Harry in Dumb and Dumber after having driven for hours on a ridiculously small scooter to get to Aspen (I hope most of you know what I'm talking about).
The slow boat stopped overnight in the tiny (tiny doesn't really describe how small this village is) village of Pak Beng. We stayed in a quaint guesthouse and had Indian food for dinner by candlelight (a bit too romantic for five guys). The food was exquisite.
We retired to the guesthouse around 9:00 pm. Sam, Blake, and I had a friendly game of 7 degrees to Kevin Bacon before sleeping.
The quote "You can't handle the truth!" kept going through my mind as I shut my eyes to sleep.
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