Up and away from China - we checked out from Mengla, and got a cycle ride down to the 'southern' bus station. Easy enough we were on our last Chinese bus - the 0900 to the border. We relented with the relentless money exchanger and changed some yuan into kip. Our 90 minute ride to the border was not vastly disturbed by roadwork incompetence this time - although we did see the teams of 'diggers' who were the root cause of the chaos. It appeaars that upon seeing a small hole in the road, a gang with pick axes decides to cut a rectangle out of the road, approximately 5 to 10 times bigger than the original hole. Eventually, someone follows them along and fills in this series of holes...

At the Chinese border we filled in our departure cards and got a tuk-tuk to the Laos side. We prouldy presented our Beijing-procured visas then walked over the border to the 'bus station' 5 minutes away. 'Shed' is a more accurate description. Still, eventually we headed off and our van / tuk-tuk affair sped us through the verdant Laos countryside towards the nearest town of any note, Lam Nam Tha. We were immediately struck by the good quality of the road (Chinese built we later learned - luckily no-one had come along to dig holes in it yet), the relative peace and quiet (very few cars...or people really), and the amazing jungle-esque surroundings. Laos is essentially completely undeveloped (hopefully it will stay that way).

We arrived in Lam Nam Tha and headed off for the best place there was (according to our guidebook), as this was our first anniversary (thanks for the well wishes / messages etc). This was an eco-lodge affair [http://www.theboatlanding.com/ghres.html] so it suited us well (Dave managed to even bore the owner with a discussion on recycling of plastics). Alas A-M was still under the weather (we started the course of antibiotics that night) so it was not perhaps the perfect occasion. However, we stoically put our best foot forward and glammed up (relatively) for the night before tucking into some tasty local fare.

More to follow....