The Slow Boat is SLOW.

Hey everyone!! It's been awhile since I've been able to jump on the internet! Thanks for all the emails and comments though! Glad you guys are enjoying all my pictures/blog! I'm having as much fun as I look like I'm having, believe me!! :)

So I left Chiang Mai to make an 8hr bus ride in the middle of the night to a place called Chiang Khong so I could catch a boat down the river to my first stop in Laos! Would have been great if I could have slept at all during the bumpy and super twisty road. A girl fell out of her seat while sleeping bc it got to be so rough! haha. We arrived to Chiang Khong just after 4am for our 3hr nap before breakfast, and of course I was one of 2 people left without a room.  The owner was a crazy Thai who loved singing everything he said and he took me and a Canadian girl down the road to another hotel he owned. He was really excited when I said I was from America, and proceeded to sing "America" over and over again until we got to our room. After breakfast (soggy eggs and toast) we headed over to the border for Laos.

Once we got onto our slow boat, I ended up meeting a bunch of really nice people from Scotland, and it was just nice to hang out while the river drifted by and get to know each other. Unfortunately for me, I once again did NOT sit next to my future husband. I sat instead next to a REALLY NICE guy from Ireland who had the WORST b.o. I have ever smelled. Ewwww. I had to pull my deodorant out and make an offhand comment about how I didn't want to smell so he would get the hint. It was the nicest way I could think of saying anything! Not that it helped! Ugh. I just had to wait until the boat started moving and pray that the breeze coming into the boat would never go away. haha. Basically I was surrounded by people from Scotland and Ireland though, and I was yet again the only American. Oh well. I ended up meeting a Canadian girl who said she started college in D.C. only to have to leave for Canada again because she hated America and all of our materialistic ways, our poverty, and the fact that anybody can't go to college bc it's so expensive. Umm...remember I'm American?? And remember how Canada and America and every other Western country is EXACTLY alike!? We are not the ONLY people who splurge on expensive handbags! Ugh..what an idiot.

We stopped over in a small town on the river after our first day out on the boat in a town called Pak Beng. A whole lot of nothing to do there, but I did have samosas for dinner. I love seeing how many random places I can find Indian people. One of the restaurant owners tried telling me where he was from in India--I had to pretend like I knew. haha. I'm a terrible Indian sometimes.

Second day on the boat was a complete 180.  On the first day we were all really chatty and super pumped to meet each other. On the second day we were over that new friend thing. haha. It was a nice 8 hour boat ride in silence until we reached Luang Prabang, the jewel of Southeast Asia apparently.