Day 90! Wow! We’re 90 days into this crazy adventure and what a fitting day for another ‘milestone’ day. Today was another excruciatingly long boat ride, made even longer by a broken down boat, but we also made it across the Laos/Thailand border! It was a tiring journey, so let’s dive into it.

The slow boat from Laos to Thailand is REALLY slow. Slower than I thought it’d be.

It’s probably because we’re going up stream, but yesterday’s ride was so much longer than what I expected.

Nonetheless, I woke up bright and early, at 6:50am, to a beautiful red sunrise and made my way to a nearby café for breakfast.

I got a small, but flavorful, chicken Banh Mi. Some of my friends I’m traveling with were up bright and early too and they joined me for breakfast.

As we finished eating, some of our straggler friends finally rolled out of bed and we started making our way to the boat pier close to 8am!

On our way to the boat we stopped for more snacks, since we devoured our snacks from the day before. This time around I got bananas (for my peanut butter), some tasty homemade nut/carmel bars, and a muffin from the bakery!

We piled back onto the slow boat and started our very long voyage to the Thai border town, Huay Xai.

The boat finally set off closer to 9am. For the first bit of the trip, I dove into the last 20 pages of the book I’ve been reading.

I finished it off and felt very accomplished! It was a really long read, but a great read. I’d highly recommend this book to any thriller and history lovers. Wildly enough, at my hostel in Luang Prabang, I found another book by the same author (different series though)! I’m excited to dive into it and see how it holds up!

I then took a couple of naps with my feet kicked up out of the window and laying horizontally on the chairs that had been ripped out of a mini van.

I woke up and saw my friend Abi playing chess on her phone. So I of course challenged her to a game where we ended up having a nice battle of making messy moves and taking them back to make the game longer and not a slaughter on either end.

The boat ride continued and another hour slowly passed by. This of course came with more beautiful views… and passed out friends.

The seats on the bus are literally ripped out of minivans and they’re not bolted down. So once everyone woke up, we finally decided to turn our area into a little living room so we could play a big game of cards together.

We played cards for quite some time and then took a snack/lunch break. While we were eating the boat stopped…

We thought it was just for a drop off, but this time it was much longer. Out of no where a small long boat (dressed up to look like a drag racing boat) pulled up next to us and started working on things on the boat, including the engine.

It turned out something was wrong with our boat and another slow boat, also seemingly out of nowhere, pulled up next to us and the crew starting moving things over.

So in turn, we followed suit carrying everyone’s bags over. This new boat had far fewer seats on it and the crew started moving the seats from our slow boat to the new one!

The inconvenience actually helped make improvements to our makeshift living room!

We made it much bigger and we were able to fit all of our friends, ‘old’ and new, around it.

We played a couple mega games of Shithead before a beautiful sunset, and fire, distracted us and then we fell into deep conversations in smaller groups.

My friend Abi and I ended up chatting for a couple hours about life. It’s really easy to do out on the road because usually you’ll never see these people again. But what makes this group special, is we’ll be hanging out for the next week or two! When that happens, a mega bond forms between everyone because we are spending practically 24/7 together.

We find out everyone’s likes and dislikes all the way to how someone ticks. Most of the time this is a great thing, sometimes it can lead to being really annoyed with someone. But I guess we’ll see the outcome soon enough… only time will tell.

Dusk set in and we were still on the slow boat. But after an 11 hour day on the slow boat we FINALLY arrived to our destination!

We were still a 25 minute drive outside of the border. So some opportunistic Tuk Tuk drivers were there trying to scam us by making us overpay.

Instead, we walked past them after an intense bartering session (we weren’t in the best mood after spending 11 hours on the boat). Eventually they drove back to our large crew, made even larger by stray passengers wanting to cross the border too, and we “settled on 40,000 Kip per person. We actually finessed 30,000 Kip per person in the end which was much better than where we started.

At 7:30pm, we rolled up to a very dark Laos border crossing. Someone read online that this late in the night the guard asked for a 20,000 Kip “overtime fee” which I almost got out of paying by showing the guard I only had 5,000 Kip… but I accidentally pulled out a 50,000 Kip, pretty big fail.

I got my stamp and made my way to the other side of the borders no man’s land. I waited for my friends to make their way through and the bus to cross to the other side of the border rolled up. It was another 20,000 Kip to get across, but it beat walking 2 kilometer.

At this point the excruciatingly long travel day was definitely taking a toll on us. But we were troopers and kept pressing on.

After accidentally overstaying my visa in Thailand last year by a day, I was slightly worried there might’ve been a bump or two when crossing back in. But luckily there wasn’t and the guard happily stamped me through with no bribe needed.

I was so excited to be back in this wonderful country!!

There were no local busses waiting for us on the Thai side, which we were told there would be (apparently they stop at 3am). There was however an older traveler who had been waiting 2 hours for a group to come so she could join them to Chiang Rai.

Luckily for her, we were able to squeeze 11 people in a 10 person private van. We had enough people to make this worth the trip and we paid 3,000 Baht ($75, just under $7 per person) for the 2 hour van ride.

We arrived in Chiang Rai tired and hangry. Most of us hadn’t ate a really meal in 24 hours and were ready to feast. However, since we got in so late we were met with very few options. So we decided to just walk the 10 minutes to our hostel, drop our bags off, and then figure it out from there.

Even with the daze, frustration, and confusion, I had a big smile on my face because I was back in a place I love!

After getting to our hostel, some of the group decided to order food in. I on the other hand needed a walk to clear my mind and reset after a semi stressful last couple of hours.

The reason I love solo traveling is because you really get to do whatever you want to do. I also love the idea of traveling in a larger group but it has its drawbacks and you have to slightly cater to the people you are with.

However, I didn’t want to order food in, so to save money and enjoy the dark night of Chiang Rai I went on a walk to find an open restaurant.

Abi, Sam, and Toby joined me as well… but we were very unsuccessful. We ended up wandering to a 7-11 that DIDN’T have a cheese toasty. So I went with a more substantial meal of two bowls of chicken and rice.

I called it a night after that and made my way to our shared dorm that we fully booked out! It’s going to be a much different experience traveling with this group, but I’m excited to see what unfolds.

I’ve made some pretty awesome memories in Thailand once before… however, it’s time to make some new ones with these awesome people!

We have an idea of what our plan is as of now, but as we all know it can change whenever. But currently the plan is to spend the day in Chiang Rai exploring the two big temples, the next day bus to Chiang Mai where some of us might motorbike the most winding road in the world to Pai, and then after Pai head to the silent retreat, and finally entering Chiang Mai again for the water festival.

You’ll know basically as soon as I do what we end up choosing! It’s going to be a fun adventure!

– Elie