By 0930 we had found a cheaper and better hotel for the following night, which was nice. Our new base was close to the Mekong and a shedload of washing was gratefully deposited with the owner. By lunch we had waved goodbye to our passports (applying for Cambodian visas - to be reunited with passports in Vientiane later this week) and then we were off to the waterfall at Tat Kuang Si for the afternoon. Our minibus had some interesting nurses from Germany and Austr...

We had a day of kayaking planned in Lam Nam Tha. But this was about the only chance we would get for the next few days to get some travellers cheques cashed at the bank, so Dave headed into town on a tuk-tuk (the lodge was about 6km from town) to check out the 'Lao Development Bank'. It was great! Whilst waiting to become a kip (Laos currency) millionairre, the bank's TV showed Chris Benoit applying a 'crippler crossface' to William Regal, whi...

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 tha...

We woke up in the beautiful grounds of the National Botanic gardens, so it seemed appropriate to have our simple brekafast fare (juice, fruit, bread) outside under some palm trees and next to a small lake. We strolled around for the morning taking in the weird and the wonderful of the Chinese plant world. Our earlyish start was useful as the hordes of Chinese tourists were only starting to descend as we headed off in the early afternoon. Some comedy logisitcs in...

Our trek started relatively early (or, at least, we were at our start point at 0830 but for a variety of logistical and breakfast reasons we were only on the road at 0930). We then got further delayed when our public bus ran into more Chinese roadwork tomfoolery. Really! Highways Agency of China - sort your act out! When you have a set of traffic which is stopped, spraying wet tar onto the gap in the road between the stationary traffic does not seem destined to h...