Chiang Mai, Slow Boat, and Luang Prabang

   After taking the night train from Ayutthaya to Chiang Mai, we spent  4 days in the city. We wandered to streets, went to the huge night bazaar several times, and ate a lot of pizza :) We relaxed a lot here. However, we did spend one day "trekking." It wasn't that intense at all. They pretty much call any tour there a trek. We rode some elephants (on the neck as well!), walked to a waterfall (a whole 1/2 hour! oh my goodness, so far!! what a trek!), saw the Karen hilltribe village, went rafting, and drove home. Not that amazing, but it was something to do.
    After Chiang Mai, we drove to Chiang Khong, the border of Thailand and Laos. On the way we visited a white wat (temple). It was super cool and really bright. It was a little weird as we had to cross a bridge over a whole bunch of clay hands reaching up from hell. Kind of weird. We'll show pictures again soon. The next morning we crossed the Mekong river into Laos. From there we took the slow boat for the next two days to Luang Prabang. The boat was really interesting; the scenery was beautiful. We saw many small villages in the hills/mountains. The river was also pretty rocky and a bit sketchy at times.
    And so here we are in Luang Prabang, spending the day biking around. We tried to find the bus station so we could get tickets to our next destination (Vang Vien), but we got lost for 2 hours! And none of the locals can understand our map so they can't tell us where we are. oh well, we found it, and now we'll stick to areas we know :)