after an interesting 3 days of travel (7 hours of curvy roads, sleeping in a ant-infested hotel/garage, waiting in a huge non-line/clump to get our visas, lao chinese new year celebrations with shotgun-style firecrackers, a day on a boat, climbing a cliff in the dark, respectfully declining the offered opium pancakes (“happy” food), a “three person” room with two twin beds, no ATMs, another day on the boat with an unexplained pit stop to pick an entire lao village, beautiful scenery, & new english friends), we finally made it to luang prabang, laos. hallelujah.