Laos - Luang Prabang

We left Chiang Mai on Saturday morning and got to the Thailand border at about 3pm. We then had to get on these little boats (picture below), as the Laos / Thailand border is the Mekong River, so this was the only way across, but was fun and interesting. From here we still had an overnight bus journey to Luang Prabang. This drive was not very comfortable, as the roads were incredibly windy and the seats were cramped.
So after 20 hours on the bus we arrived in Luang Prabang early on Sunday morning. This might sound like a long time, but the other option was to get a slow boat which would have taken 3 full days and 2 nights and the boats have hard seats and didn't seem all that safe.
We liked Luang Prabang, especially walking along the Mekong River that runs alongside the town and found a bar that made the nicest fruit smoothies where we just hung out. Our first impression of Laos food wasn't great, but mostly because of the restaurant we first went to.  To start they brought me the wrong order, with the wrong rice and when I eventually got my food, by which point Colin had nearly finished and my rice was cold, I found a little cockroach in my food. Luckily we had some nice food the second day at a place that was so festivly decorated you'd think it was Santa's grotto. Both evenings we walked through the night market with such lovely and different items, which again we were tempted to buy.
The next day we got an early bus and headed to Vang Vieng.