We were rudely awoken at 6.00 in the morning and told to get off the coach with our passports and coach tickets which took a lot of effort on both our parts since we had had two nights of lousy sleep on coaches and were both very tired. We got off and gave in our passports so they could check there validity before croosing the border into Laos. Phil looked as if he had fallen back to sleep again on a table behind me while i introduced myself to a girl called Claire who was on her way to visit her brother in laos. We spoke whilst filling in the visa forms and then were all able to get back on the coach so we could make a five minute journey down the road to get off the coach again.

This time it was so we could go through the immigration gates where our passports had to once again be checked and stamped. We got back on the coach again and made the 30 second journey down the road to get off again, but this time all our bags and belongings came with us. Here we had to apply and pay for the visa which cost us 37$, then we had to go through a gate to check the visa and have its information stored, then we had to pay to enter the country and finally we had to have the tickets for entry checked. We both spoke to Claire for a bit whilst waiting for the local bus to take us to Vientiane, Laos' capital city. The bus came and everyone who had been on the coach squeezed on. I ended up talking to another girl sitting next to me who was travelling with her older sister, Talia, and who we happened to spend the majority of the rest of the day with.

We got to Vientiane, got off and stood there for about five minutes looking at the strangest capital city we had ever seen. There was no one there, hardly any traffic and it took us a while to try and work out where exactly we were in the lonely planet. Turns out Talia had been there the year before and roughly new where all the hotels were, so we followed her for what seemed a lot longer tha it was and finally found a nice place down a side road. We checked in for 100000 kip and i headed straight for the shower as we hadnt been able to shower for two days and felt disgusting.

We sat around for a bit after deciding we wernt going to have a nap and then knocked on the girls door to see if they wanted to come for lunch. We found a little place to have lunch, parallel to what would have been a flowing river in the rainy season but was about a mile out and we could barely see any water. Conversation wasnt exactly flowing and it didnt help that we were all knackered but we managed to string a conversation together. We payed and made the relatively long walk to the bus station so we could work out our journey to Vane Viene the next day.

We started to make the slow walk back to the hotel but came across Laos' national museum which we walked around for about an hour and then headed for the internet cafe. As the connection was incredibly slow and i was falling asleep i left the others and made the slightly confused walk back to where we were staying to realise that we had locked our door with Phils lock which i didnt know the combination for...slightly annoying! I sat down stairs in the outdoor reception/lounge area and finished the last five days of my diary before Phil got back and then we decided to go and have a sleep.

I woke up at about 6.30 and read some pf my book before Phil awoke and asked me what the time was, i told him 7.00 and we had a slightly confused, highly amusing moment when Phil thought it was 7.00 in the morning instead of the evening.

Anyway, we got up and decided to go for dinner just the two of us at a little indian place on the main road. We had a really nice evening and the food was really suprisingly good. Still very tired though we went back to the hotel after, read our books for a while and went to bed.