Day 112 -- Chiang Mai to Chang Khaong (Laos)

So a travel day. Planned on getting up at 5:30 so we could be at the bus station by 6AM to buy our tickets since we were slack and hadn't taken care of that. At about 4:45AM at the door knocking is a group of Thai girls after a night out who were looking for the guys who had previously occupied our room...funny story and either way they made sure we weren't missing our bus. Got to the station, bought tickets and sat on the 8 hour trek to Chang Khaong. They were blasting Thai movies at 6:30AM...not sure who was paying attention so the iPod tuned out all sound.

The landscape was really cool...passing villages and small towns along the way and surprisingly the roads were good. Bus got in early and we made our way to the Mekong River to cross the border into Laos. Thailand immigration complete, we hopped on a sketchy small boat across the river which took all of 45 seconds and went through Laos immigration. Nothing like the border between the Texas and Mexico that I'm used to since here it looked like you could cross anywhere and be home free. We decided to go the legal route so we wouldn't get locked up. Stopped by the Gibbon Experience office to get checked in and next we found a guesthouse for 80,000 kip (8,500 kip = 1 USD) and its probably the nicest one we've had in all of SE Asia...they provided soap, towels, toilet paper! AMAZING! Even has a view of the Mekong! Anyways, going to eat some Indian food that we spotted to get a change from the loads of Thai food we've had over the past two weeks...tomorrow morning we're off for 3 days for our gibbon trek. check in then!