What a day. We've come to realise that for every few great days, there will always be another day that throws problems at you and is draining. They are 'one of those days'.

We caught our mini van from Vientiane, walking in the already blistering heat at 9am from our out of town accommodation. The shuttle bus wouldn't pick us up as we weren't in the city centre circle. The van actually passed right by the driveway of Villa Lao en route to Vang Vieng ....at 10.15am, 95 minutes after we'd left!

The 'three hour' journey that they advertise is always longer. We got in the van at 9.30am and arrived in Vang Vieng around 2pm. Not too bad and the scenery en route was stunning. It really reminded us of travelling through Africa.

The 'challenges' started when we arrived. We walked in the scorching sun the entirely wrong way out of town and had to ask at a guest house to use their wifi to get on Google maps, to realise we needed to head back the other way. Our hotel turned out to be just behind where we got dropped off.

We arrived to a hotel undergoing major renovation work with half of the place a building site. The non English speaking 'receptionist' didn't recognise our booking and put us in a room which was reached via the building site and looked out onto the laundry drying area and a dirt field. Not quite the bungalow with private balcony at $40 we had paid for. We questioned the guy who said all the rooms, one of which we had allegedly booked, were full and this was the only one available. We'd paid in full via credit card, thankfully for only one night, and no email was given for hotels.com to try and resolve the issue. Not wanting to lose our money we took the room, dodging the gaping manhole with no cover, dropping down to water. The pool unfortunately was without water, still under construction.

After a protracted conversation he put us on the phone to his manager who asked our name again. The guy then showed us to our room!!! The manager explained he hadn't been able to find our booking when we showed him our name & email confirmation and so had put us in the worst room they had!

It smelt mouldy and had an extra bed in taking up all the room. We said we didn't want it but wanted a $20 refund, the difference between this room and the one we had already taken. Another long conversation led to an agreement to refund $12 as they don't get the full $40 hotels.com charge for the booking.

Thinking it would be easy to find a room elsewhere we scoured Vang Vieng to find most places full, too expensive or not great at all.

The one we wanted to find involved a trek over the toll bridge, 30p p/p every time you traverse it. Costs would soon add up.

Feeling rather forelorn we called into a Mexican restaurant for a beer. I randomly asked an English couple if they could recommend somewhere. They were staying somewhere great, out of town, with lovely owners. It was the place we had been trying to find.

The owners of the Mexican knew the owner of the bungalows & so made a call. We now have a bungalow in a quiet location, with amazing views of the karst scenery, reserved. We can also reach it via the free pedestrian bridge and so don't need to pay a toll every time we want to go back. It's no more than £10 per night. Half the price of where we are.

We'll be getting up early, going for breakfast somewhere & then checking into our accommodation & tomorrow we will be back on good travel days! Hopefully. :-)