On a long boat, during the rainy season on the Mekong!

I am writing from Chang Mai in Northern Thailand. We arrived here last night after an exhausting 3 day adventure along the Mekong River. Our adventure begins 7:45 am, Luang Prabang!! We were picked up by a tuk tuk and dropped off at the boat dock on the Mekong river (during the rainy season). We were pleased to find an old wooden longboat with mini van seats inside (and only about 35 people), much better than the wooden benches and hundreds of people we were expecting! Muff, Mamma J and I selfishly spread out our legs and took up 2 seats each (don’t worry everyone on the boat had a seat or 2). We slept, read books and admired the stunning scenery (it really was amazing) while we waited for the boat to arrive in Pakbeng 6 to 8 hours later, where we would spend the night in a guest house. During our trip the boat dropped locals off at small villages along the way and the inevitable happened, our boat broke down, but just long enough that it ended up getting dark before Pakbeng and our non English speaking boat driver explained to us we would have to sleep on the boat, during the rainy season, on the Mekong (I know I’ve already stressed this, but it Was during the rainy season along the Mekong river). He docked the boat at a miniscule village. All 9 of us tourists pushed the mini van seats together and lay down for a long and sleepless night…actually Mamma J slept just fine and Muff learnt that Gravol is a girls best friend!!! At sunrise our boat set off again, finally arriving in Pakbeng in time for us to catch our long boat for the second leg of our journey and only 12 hours late. Now this boat was what we had expected, wooden bench seats, and instead of hundreds of people, a whole boat full of supplies to be delivered to all the villages along the way!!! We were told we would make it to the border crossing in Thailand that day, however with our experience the day before we thought that unlikely, and seeing as our 6 hour journey the day before took 24 hours AND we had to deliver all the goods AND we were going against the current we arrived just as the sun was setting once again…but this time we did arrive in time to find a guesthouse!! After eating Nutella, peanut butter and bread we were ready for a real meal!! We ended up eating, sleeping and then waking up early to catch the ferry across to the thai side, we hopped on a bus and headed to Chang Mai…this of course was an adventure as well, we asked the tuk tuk to take us to the bus station and he so nicely dropped us of at a VIP travel agent who had a bus leaving 30 minutes later, they insisted that it was the bus station, although we knew it wasn’t. Now this bus was really nice, water and cookies included, however the driver was SO slow, the assistant was flirting with him and the bus continuously stopped to let people on and off, but not the usually on and off, each time the bus would stop between 5 and 25 minutes!! At one of the stops we ran into some of the people who had been on the slow boat with us, they were on a more local bus that had left 1 ½ hours after us…ugh…..all a part of the adventure!! We arrived in Chang Mai last night at Mamma Js cousins (heathers brother) in a lovely neighbourhood right by an amazing night food market that is on only on 2 days a week…so we went on a food extravaganza!! Beet juice, sushi, spring rolls and more...oh and of course lady boys...they are SO COOL!!!!!!!