The land of a million elephants

After our visit to Mai Sai and our foray into Myanmar for a day we decided that Chiang Rai didn't have that much more that we wated to see so we decided to head north to Chiang Khong and across the border to Huay Xai in Laos. The bus ride took three hurs to cover just over 100km's and was definately the 'local Bus' variety with seats definately not built for people who are 196cm and roads not built for "express" bus services!! We were squeezed in on funny angles and were the only farangs (foreigners) on the bus however the difficulties in travelling were more than made up for by the outstanding countryside that we travelled through. We travelled into a number of mountainous areas where bananna trees, maize and sugar Caner as well as the occasional workers hut seemed to cling to the hill sides. When the ground was flat then rice crops dominated and I was truly taken by the beauty of the land we were travelling through. After three hours we arrived in Chiang Khong and decided to head straight to immigration and the border and after paying our Tuk tuk drivers (whose engines seemed to find the 2km trip to the border with two of us and our bags extremely difficult) we then had our passports stamped and headed down the hill to the river 'taxi' which was just a long boat with an outbourd which we needed to walk through the water to get to. We crossed the border and organised our visa's and extry to Laos without a problem and with one big bonus....we became instant millionaires!! After getting our visa's we exchanged 4000 Thai Baht (about $143 Australian) into Lao Kip and in exchanges received 1,072,000 kip....Millionaires. The exchange rate is $1 Aust = 28 Baht = 7500 Kip! I quickly realised that it may have been a mistake as I had a wad of money three quarters of an inch thick which certainly wasn't going to fit in my wallet and which makes paying for things quite scary (like one minute on the internet right now costs 100 kip which sounds lik a lot but is just 80 cents/hour). Anyway we were there and we headed to a guesthouse for the night and purchased tickets for the slow boat journey the next morning. After we settled in we decided to walk back into the town and climbed the steps leading to the towns only Wat (temple) just as the monks started their evening chants. It was quite enchanting to listen to and the boys and I (women were not allowed) climbed a pagoda to look at an ancient drum and bell used by the monks and to view the mighty Mekong river from the highest point in Huay Xai. After dinner we were briefly rained on before scrambling back to the hostel for the night in our Bamboo rooms.....quite apt for our first night in the Land of a million Elephants! David