When we decided to go to Thailand, we had quite a few ways of getting there. The fastest was flying from Luang Prabang, Laos on a one hour flight for a whopping $150 per person. The second was to take another (probably) horrible bus through the mountains to Vientiane, then from there to Bangkok, then all the way back up Thailand to Chiang Mai which was our destination. The third option was to hire a slow boat which would take two full days on the Mekong river which is one of the biggest in Asia. It spans nearly 3000 miles long from southern China all the way past Cambodia and Thailand.