Imperial Golden Triangle Chiang Saen

... so you are left with little choice but to accept whatever is available. Saying that it only cost 2 pounds a night but the old adage you get what you paid for is true!

We ate in a local restaurant/shack that evening and I must say the food was first class. We had to be back by 10:30 as there is a curfew and all the main lights in the whole town go out. Good job i had my mag light otherwise we could have been in trouble!

... only interrupted by Lanna trying to stop and eat the foliage, that naughty girl.

At one point we had to go down a very steep set of stairs. It was so steep, I had to hold on to the rope behind me (wrapped around Lanna's midsection) to keep from falling off. I was basically leaning all the way back along her back, which made me completely vertical. You probably had to be there to visualize it.

We arrived at the river, and they told us to take off our shoes ...

... their families. The mahouts continue to work with their elephants, the wives learn silk weaving, and the children attend school.

Our dining table was out on a patio overlooking the jungle, and since I had had an encounter with spiderasaurus, I wasn't too enthralled about being seated at the forest end of the table. It was also very dark out there. And with little light at the table, I never quite knew what I was eating. In fact, I ate something out of ...

... night we stopped in Pakbeng for the night – we got there just before dark and found a really good room for 50,000 Kip, the cheapest we've had in a while. All we done that night was have a walk around the town, bought 2 ponchos, had dinner, got offered weed by a 15 year old and had a shot of Lao Lao (local spirit) forced upon us after dinner.

The next days boat was far superior in its seating arrangements with bus seats being the majority of seating available. Still, the ...

We booked ourselves on the 9.30am bus from Luang Prabang up to Huay Xai on the Laos/Thai border. We needed to be in Huay Xai to go to the gibbon experience and we had planned on getting the night bus, until we learned it didn't have beds like our last night bus - we didn't fancy missing a night of sleep.

The bus was a VIP bus, this means it had air con, until something seemed to go wrong with the battery after a few hours and thankfully it ...

... to the jungle who were onboard could take a relatively short and easy DOWNHILL walk the rest of the way...easy really. Apparently not! Eventually it returned and on we, now a total of 12 people + driver, climb on. This trip was nowhere near as thrilling, if that's the right word for it, as the one two days previous but still pretty bumpy and I have to say that the car did even better this time considering the number of people onboard. Those Land ...

... one and rather dodgy mosquito nets with huge holes in them so we...well I, decided to put our one up instead. This was a bit of a mistake because although it did serve its purpose through the night and didn't let any mosquitos in, the mesh was not fine enough to stop the teeny tiny flies and therefore most of the night was spent itching and scratching. Also you could see through our net and of course anything that might want to drop on it!
We ...

... around the corner from where we were staying had the price in English, but the instructions were in Thai, so we had to use the pictures to work out how the dispenser worked. We had all our bottles lined up, with the lids off ready to catch the water as it dispensed. The pictures led us to believe there would be a 'stop' button as well as a 'start' button, but once we put the money in and had pushed the 'start' button we ...

... Yesterday I treated myself to a Thai massage. I still get problems with my shoulder when I cycle, I just don't mention it often. It's much more manageable now and kicks in much later in a ride than it used to, however, cumulatively it can get painful when we've been on the road for several days/kilometres. I explained to the 2 tiny women who were going to be doing my massage that I had cycled here from Bangkok and that I would like them to ...

... in the Mekong are part of Laos). Not too much to see there, but it's where I had my first tasty Beer Lao (with many more to come later). The next morning we had an amazing time learning how to be a "mahout" (elephant driver). In addition to being able to wear a pair of really snazzy pants for a while, we learned how to drive an elephant with basic commands ("Stop" of course, being the most important one). We did this at the elephant camp owned by our hotel, which rescues street ...