Surviving the slow boat

Just recovering from my first case of food poisoning. At first I was afraid it was malaria, but it passed so I think we're all good. Man, being sick on the road is terrible. All I could think of was wanting to be in my soft bed at home. The beds here are very hard and nobody can take care of a sick person better than your mother.

So Shaun and I took the overnight bus from Pai to the Thai border on Friday night. We arrived around 3am, to which we were popped into a guesthouse for another 5 hours of sleep. At 8am, we were stuck into a truck to the immigration "office". I could barely stand with my backpack in line because I was feeling so sick. At that point, I hadn't really eaten anything in about a day. We spent the next hour or so going through immigration at the Thai border and the Laos border, which was a terribly inefficient process that I won't even bore you with.

Then we hopped on the slow boat. The slow boat is a long boat with sets of benches on either side. The benches are wooden. They hurt to sit on. Luckily for us, the aisle between the benches was about 7 feet wide so as soon as we left the pier, anyone under the age of 30 was sprawled out in the aisle- sleeping, playing cards, playing the guitar, etc. Great way to meet friends. Not that I was in any condition to do anything other than sleep and go through cycles of chills. We did that for about 6 hours and reached our stopping point for the night just after sunset.

Today was the same- except they put us on a different boat. More people, smaller boat, foot and a half aisle. Today was mostly spend fighting for a 2x2 area of space to put your feet. Not the most comfortable boat ride of my life. The scenery was beautiful though. Absolutely stunning. Lush green river valley, dark brown rocks the filter into sandy beaches on the river. I didn't get as many pictures as I'd like, but I think I'll be able to keep the mental images of children running down the sand beaches with the forests in the background for awhile.

Im exhausted. I'm seriously considering going to bed at 7pm right now just because I'm so tired.