Well needless to say my lonely journey to Chiang Rai was extremely boring and with the flight to Chiang Rai on the following morning it meant I had to endure and overnight stay at Bangkok airport for the second time this year.

The good news however was that with all our different arrival times we still managed to meet up successfully at our hotel in Chiang Rai.

It was very strange meeting up with Ray, G and Joel again after nearly 8 months since we were all in our beach hut on Ko Lipe. Along with them my friend Simon who i met in Sydney also met up with us and i was really looking forward to heading to Laos and starting our trip.

Before we did we first headed to a temple not far from the centre of town. I’ve seen a fair few temples now and i thought this one would much of the same thing but i was very surprised when we got there. The designer started building the temple in 2007 but he doesn’t expect it to finish until 2070! The design was like nothing i have seen before and i’m looking forward to getting some pictures uploaded. This time i didn’t bring my laptop with me so it will have to wait until i’m back in Sydney!

The next day we caught a bus and headed up to the border and all got into Laos without a hitch, and just about made it to the only slow boat running that day.

The slow boat down then Mekong river was very cool, but in honesty we were all pretty bored of it by the second day and glad to finally get off at Luang Prabang where we are staying for the next few days. There’s plenty of cool stuff to do here and i’m especially looking forward to elephant riding and seeing some waterfalls!

That’s all for now!