8 hours. We certainly went through some amazing scenery and I’m glad we took this route but I think I can honestly say that it’s a thing you only do once!!! After what seemed an eternity we arrived at Laos’s border town, we took a tuk tuk to the guest house street, the first one we tried was full, so Rob wandered off on his own to find us a bed for the night. Thankfully he came back and had made a great choice, the room was clean and the beds were comfy, that was all I needed and wanted by that point. I think we ended up going to bed at some ridiculously early hour but sleep was the best thing going for the both of us at that moment in time!

We woke up the next morning feeling slightly better, but we knew that we needed to cross the border and take a 2 hour bus ride to Chiang Rai. Can’t say I was really looking forward to that either. Blimley if its not rocking around on some wooden

boat for 8 hours then it’s a 2 hour bumpy bus journey, not really the best things for dodgy tums!!! We both managed a small breakfast and it stayed down which was the main thing so things were definitely looking up! We got down to the boat crossing place and obviously weren’t thinking straight and just got on the river boat. When we arrived at Thailand Customs they asked us where was our Laos exit stamp and we were like ‘erm, oh no!!‘, we had only managed to leave Laos without getting an exit stamp!!! We had seen a sign for a money exchange but none for customs so it was back on the boat again and back to Laos to get the stamp, then yeap you guessed it, back on the boat again and back to Thailand Customs - doh!!! Thankfully this time we were allowed into Thailand!

We got a bus no problem but we did feel very sad to have left Laos, it is honestly one of the best places either of us have