The day we flew to Luang Prabang was an eventful one. Firstly we nearly didn't make it to the airport on time. My camera memory card with weeks of photos on it decided to get corrupted, so I gave it to a guy in an internet cafe in Thailand to try and retrieve the files. The process took hours and a tuk tuk was waiting outside with all our bags in it whilst I willed the computer to work faster. In the end I had to interrupt the programme half way through and I'm not sure all the photos were safe, but most of them seem to be ok.
So, we manage to get to Chiang Mai airport with time on our side. Then, at customs, we find out that we have overstayed our visa by two days. The rules, which previously allowed us 30 days in the country, were changed whilst we were away and we weren't of it. We obviously should have checked the exit date stamped in our passport but, as we thought we had 30 days, we hadn't bothered. Fortunately they are nicer at Chiang Mai than some cutoms officers could choose to mebe and simply fined us. It turned out to be about 20 pounds each, which isn't the end of the world, but wasn't money we had to throw around. We felt quite naughty as we signed our names next to the 'offender' field on the form at the airport.
We arrived at Chiang Mai airport, after a flight in the shaky tin-can that is Lao airlines, and promptly left our South East Asia guide book on a seat, so we had no idea where we were when the taxi dropped us off.
However, we did find a reasonable guest house to stay at, where the owner laughed nervously a lot. He seemed to find a whole lot of unexplainable humour in the fact that another of his guests had a similar pair of flip-flops to Ben. We loved the town. Sleepy and quaint, with French colonial style buildings adorned with hanging baskets and wooden shutters, there was a lovely ambience that we enjoyed straight away.
We kept the activities to a minimum, wandering the pretty streets instead and soaking up the atmosphere. At night, the town came alive with a fantastic market, where all the villagers from the neighbouring tribes come down from the mountains to sell their beautiful handicrafts. Not normally big souvenir buyers, we couldn't help getting in a haggling for a few things.
We were on a bit of a whistlestop tour of Laos, so we only stayed a couple of nights, before we caught the bus a few hours South to Vang Vieng.
