Most people head straight to the border, and don't spend the day at Sam Neua, but because we are stupid, we had completely ran out of money and the bank opened at 8am, and the bus we had to catch left at 7am! But we were really glad we stayed as it was not only a welcome break from bus journeys, but also a really good experience! Sam Neua is a rual village in the mountains (so its cold) and the people aren't used to tourists (like they are in the other places we ...

We caught the 8am bus to Sam Neua which took about 10hrs!! The bus was a small bus (about 16 seats) but was crammed full of people (about 24), and for literally the whole journey there was one woman being sick (asian people seem to suffer with trave sickness really badly!). When we finally arrived at Sam Neua we had dinner with some of the people on our bus.