...My Own Final Fantasy

i had all my nothing time in chiang mai and now i was ready to take the slow boat to laos. well, actually it was more like HAD to. my visa was up and i had to leave the country. as soon as i got on the minibus heading towards the border i starting hitting it off quite well with and brit, irish, scottish and american. blah blah blah where you from, blah blah blah where you been, blah blah blah insert funny story here, you know... the usual travelling banter. this minibus departed chiang mai at 9pm so we had to stop for the night at a sub par gust house and wait until the morning to do the border crossing. i was lucky enough to get my own room out of all the other people on the bus who shared. the next morning, we all packed up and jumped in the back of a pick up and drove a quick way to the water for a real crappy complimentary breakfast where i met my better friends for the rest of this journey, a pair of girls from australia. we crossed the water to the other side where all the visa bulllshit goes down. it was here where my group of travelling buddies grew from 2 aussies and me, to 2 aussies, 1 english, 1 dane and me. the whole process was harrowing to say the least, bottle neck structure with nasty french men with oversized bags spinning and turning and bumping you around when you just want to move on. of course canadians get the short end of the stick in that our lao visa cost the most out of any country listed.... a whopping $42. i saw as low as $25 for other countries. we all finally made it across and were asked to sit at some shitty restaurant while they verified our passports. erm, didn't they just do that at the border? FINALLY we boarded the slow boat which was actually much more luxerious that i had originally imagined. this is also to say that it was  by no means fancy. my group and i got on later than most so alot of single traveller assholes took benches instead of sharing while groups had to be all divided. we opted for the engine room. it was super spatious and we reckoned it couldn't be that loud.... but, well... it was. so we searched the main seating area and found enough single bench ends to satisfy our group. it was like, 6-7 hours to pak beng, our night stopever. this was probably one of my favourite experiences travelling. just being crammed on this boat with excellent scenery, drinking beer lao with new friends and having excellent conversation every where i turned. i didn't even pull my book, ipod or DS out once. pak beng was a strange place. it seemed like a town that was built specifically for this drop off. we met a pair of british girls here who we added to our posse and we went for dinner at an indian restaurant. it was ok. they had catfish in the bathroom. the electricity dies everynight at 10pm, so that made for an interesting evening. candle lit card games with our german guitar player. the guesthouse was interesting.... this was my first time sharing a room with anyone other than landon. it was with the one brit guy and he opted for the "my head by your feet"  sleep formation. the next morning, another sub par breakfast and off we are to the slowboat again. this time we were prepared and were among the first on the boat and comandeered the best section. this ride wasn't quite the same as the day before. i'm grumpy in the morning so i just sat there for the first bit doing nothing. eventually the fun picked up again, still having fun drinking and playing cards with an excellent view the whole way. new friends including an american and a scottish guy. anyways, words can only go so far describing the good times, so i'll just suggest that if you go to laos, go from the north of thailand and take the slow boat. that's good for now... i'll let you wait for luang prabang....