We woke up for the last time in the Guesthouse slightly hungover from the night before and went for an all day breakfast. At 1pm, our bus picked us up to take us to Vientiane for our 8pm flight to Hanoi. As I got on the bus, I spotted Adam from the night before which was slightly awkward after my refusal!

I slept most of the way on the bus next to Sam who started panicking that we were getting to Vientiane late and that we might miss our 8pm flight. Little did we know, this was the last of our problems that day.

So, we got to the bus station finally and found a tuktuk to get us to the airport. After a lot of stressing that we wouldn't make it, we finally got to the departures building.

It was at this point that I pulled the ticket out of my pocket to see flight from Vientiane at 2:40pm. It was now 6:30 - perfect timing for an 8pm flight. My face fell as Charlotte and Gemma instantly asked 'what, what's wrong?!' I quickly had to break it to them that we had missed our flight by 4 hours somehow even though we had been adamant that we booked on the 8pm flight like Sam and Henry.

While we ran around like headless chickens trying to find out if we could get on to the 8pm flight, Sam and Henry managed to get in the queue to check in. I was confident that there would be at least 3 seats available on their flight and we could squeeze on for a small surcharge.

We ran from office to office, battling the lack of English language abilities and started getting crosser and crosser as it crept closer to 8pm and we were none the wiser if we could get on, or at least wait until the 2pm flight the next day. By ten to 8, we were back at the check in desk asking if there were any seats as they seemed the best bet. The flight was delayed as Sam and Henry were still queuing so we were told we could be on stand by for if anyone was stupid enough to miss their flights..like we had.

We had been on an emotional roller coaster for the last few hours, from confusion, hysteria, frustration and now just anger at their lack of knowledge of how to book onto the next flight. We finally got it out of the Lao Airlines guy that there were business class seats were available so at the last moment, we could pay the charge and join Sam and Henry. We got our bank cards out to pay before he said, no banks cards are accepted. What? At an airport? We had a sneaky suspicion he didn't want us in business class. We offered to go to the ATM but he said, no sorry, no time and walked away. We still didn't know if we could get on a flight for the next day which was so annoying.

To add to our debacle, two German guys had turned up just hoping they could get on the 8pm flight so they were now our direct competition for the flight the next day. It was like WW2 again, there was a clear cut animosity between us from the beginning.

We finally gave up and decided to book into the nearest hotel to the airport and wake up early to get to the ticket office. It was now dark and raining outside and we were fed up. We started walking in the completely opposite direction of the hotel before I said 'nope, not waking any further down that dark lane near an abandoned airport'. I know that when one thing goes wrong, it's very easy for things to snowball.

We finally gave up and got into a taxi which drove us the whole 5 mins to the hotel. After some confusion over how much the room was, we finally paid and had secured ourselves two overpriced rooms. They stank of smoke but were reasonable enough for one night. As we were hungry, we ventured down to the restaurant where matters only worsened when the waiters had no idea what we wanted and the menu was incredibly expensive. After discovering there was no sweet and sour chicken, we opted for kung po chicken which turned up and made a bad day even worse. It was soooooo spicy and the chicken was just bits of bone and disgusting.

After managing only a few mouthfuls of spicy s***, we finally called it a night and went to bed for an early get up the next day to get to the ticket office. I didn't want to upset the girls, but there had been 3 seats in economy that evening that were reasonably priced but the bloody Germans beat us to it and now only 1 was showing. I wish we had just booked them then but oh well. I knew this couldn't be a good thing but thought there was nothing else we could do so fell asleep instead!