We caught up on sleep today so had a leisurely breakfast and on into Chang Mai. We then caught a shared taxi out to Doi Supet a temple about 12km outside of town- along with half of Chang Mai it seemed. The Thais have a 3 day holiday at new year and the temple is a popular spot. It is on a large hill overlooking Chang Mai with a climb of 250 steps up to the main temple. (We discovered later you could catch a funicular to the top). The temple itself would have been beautiful - if the main part wasn't covered in bamboo scaffolding. The Thais were all taking along offerings and were walking round the main part of the temple in a long queue before placing the offerings. The reason for today being so popular was unclear but think it is something to do with the new year and making a fresh start.After this we had a look round the night market (even though it was afternoon). Fran found a jade stall and managed to persuade me that she needed to make some purchases - to replace the stuff she had given to Victoria to take home!! I couldn't say much having just replaced my camera. The holiday really ended the next day - we were up early as we had to get out of the country today due to our visas expiring. We were up at 5:30 for a 6:30 bus to the border. It took about 6 hours on the bus - with various stops where at least we could purchase breakfast (fresh mango and yoghurt). We reached the border post at about 1:30 and got in the scrum to get our passports stamped.The border crossing was in a small boat that you had to jump into at the river bank (the border is the river Mekong) - we nearly got our feet wet just getting in. It was a 2 minute journey and we were in Laos.The Lao border process was fairly simple - just a means of extracting money. 35US$ for each visa and 1$ because it is the weekend and the immigration people are on overtime! Still it was fairly quick and we were in the one street town of Houay Xia. It didn't feel a lot different to Thailand but everything was cheaper - with prices in Thai Baht, US$ and Laotian kip - done to confuse the tourist because you never win on rates. We found a hotel for overnight and booked the next leg of our journey - a slow boat down the river to Luang Prabang.