I'm not exactly sure why I decided to leave Laos so soon. There would have been more to see in Luang Prabang, and I really liked the climate and slow pace of life in Laos - and I loved the fact that saying 'hello' in Lao forces you to smile (just try saying 'sabaidee' without getting your lips into smiling position, and you'll know what I mean.)
Maybe it was the crappy party hostel that I stayed at that made me want to leave? By the end of my seven nights in Luang Prabang I was really fed up with the crowd of 20-year olds hanging around the hostel comparing their latest getting-drunk adventures.
Whatever the reason, last night I found myself on a bus bound for the Lao-Thai border. In the morning, we arrived in Houay Xai, the border town on the Lao side. After a short tuk-tuk ride we were at the border, got stamped out of Laos and boarded a ferry across the Mekong river that forms the border between the two countries. Immigration on the Thai side was very quick: Thailand is one of the few countries in South-East Asia where Germans don't need a visa.
We arrived in Chiang Mai in the afternoon, and I was pleasantly surprised by my hostel. I had booked one of the more expensive ones - where the reviews consistently said that it was quiet and very definitely not a party hostel. The hostel turned out to have a garden that seemed to be a popular hangout for squirrels, birds and geckos. I was especially happy about the squirrels, and so I chose to hang out with them for the rest of the day, and continue to work on job applications.
