We were relieved to learn that we had hot water in our room which is a treat really! We were woken up by all the other backpackers boarding the mini bus to the border, the drivers were shouting about passport photos and prices for the visa into Laos. I was determined to sleep through the racket though, as i really needed a bit of a lay in after our arrival at 2:35 the night before.

We ended up sleeping till around 09:00 when we slowly began to get ready, get our dollars and passports at hand ready for the border crossing. We left the room and walked up onto the high street where we were offered a cab to the border pretty much straight away, so we both hopped inside. Tell a lie, it wasn't a taxi or tuktuk it was like a truck with a lot of open space at the back where we chucked in our backpacks and dan and i sat in the front section of the vehicle with the driver. He was listening to thai music when sounds very similar to indian music mixed with a few arabic sounding percussions.

We got the the border after a 10 minute drive. We were unsure what steps we had to take so we walked to the uniformed man with our passports. He then asked us where our departure cards were and that we needed it in order to leave the country. First thought was s***! After a panic and quick rumble inside my money belt i found it! Thank god! They didn't stress the importance of keeping that small bit of paper on arrival, as a fellow traveller found out although he managed to get a knew one, probably for the right price.

Departure cards in hand, dan quickly went to buy our bus tickets that take us across the border, these cost 20TB per person and it was around a 5 minute drive through limbo until we reached the border crossing into Laos. We filled out the appropriate forms and handed the man behind the desk our passport photos along with our passports, he handed us back another arrival/departure form to fill out. The Laos stamp in the passport is pretty hefty; taking up a whole page, much to my annoyance. Who do they think they are with that size sticker? Even my stamp for new york was tiny and barely noticeable, humble new yorkers!

We then paid the $30 for our visa and made our way through the arrivals gate and out the other end to change some money from BAHT to KIP. i changed around 3,000 TB and received around 750,000 kip, BALLER! We made our way outside for a smoke whilst deliberating which our next destination was to head for. We shared a cab with a couple of travellers and went to a town called huay xia, this is where we will catch a slow boat from the next morning.

We un boarded the taxi and began to walk down what seemed to be the main strip, in dan's travel book, it mentions a guesthouse called "gecko bar" and is labelled"top choice". We found this in no time and asked for one room. It was easy enough, a young girl unhooked a pair of keys and lead us through a small dark hallway and out into the main guesthouse area, included was a river-view "restaurant" (if you can call it that). Our room looked decent, it was dark when we entered because the curtains pulled shut, there was a strong scent of incense but we later saw it was a small mosquito coil burning. We unloaded our stuff and headed back out again to find a good deal to book the slow boat.

We ended up booking it from a guesthouse just a few yards from where we stayed, BAP GUESTHOUSE it's called. The deal included a tuktuk from the guesthouse at 09:00 to the long boat port, and the journey from huay xai, stop off at pakbeng and then another boat down to luang phabang. This cost us 240,000kip, equivalent of around £20 and was the cheapest we had seen it. After booking the boat, we headed back to our guesthouses river view restaurant for a bite to eat.

It was more like a patio with a shelter, overlooking the mekong river. There were only a few tables, me and dan opted for the makeshift car seats instead of the traditional wooden chair, they were surprisingly comfortable! The worker (can't really refer to him as a waiter at all, probably just a member of the family) handed us one menu to look at as well as a small deck of white cards and a pen to write our order on. We went for a small beerlao, a mango shake, tuna salad sandwich, tuna salad and cheese sandwich and a portion of french fries.

It took quite a while to get to us and was nothing compared to the beastly tuna baguette we had in Pai, but it was decent enough to eat. I'd asked for mayonnaise when i first received my sandwich, to which, he had no clue what i was asking for so i wrote it down for him on a piece of paper. He returned 5 minutes later with no mayo, so i assumed they had none. Tucking into my sandwich and looking out onto the view of the muddy mekong river and lush hills, a woman came over baring mayonnaise in a bowl, at this point i only had a quarter of my sandwich left. Nevertheless i said thank you and smeared a pea sized amount of it on the crust of my baguette.

The food filled us up quite quickly so we both lay down on the row of three car seats and slept for a short while, i can't say how long. Daniel woke me up and suggested we went back to the room for a proper nap as we were both so incredibly tired. So, off we walked, up the stairs and into room 12 and conked out.

When i woke up it was 19:07, i thought i ought to wake dan up as he would be hungry, although he was half awake anyway. We stirred for a while before getting out of bed and out the room to find a place to eat. After a quick browse at the menu opposite gecko bar we settled for the food at our guesthouse. While waiting for menus, we were watching street dogs fight and locals selling tourists marijuana, they sell weed out here like it's popcorn!
We were waiting quite a while until we got menus, we've noticed that in Laos, standards of service isn't really at all important as they leave you waiting aaaaaages and ages with no form of apology after. When we eventually were able to order i went for a vegetable noodle soup and spring rolls. The soup were so peppery! It tasted nice however and the spring rolls were appetising, if not a little oily. After settling the bill we went to the ATM machine to take out some more cash and on the way back a man beckoned us over calling "weed weed"- only in south east asia. We headed back to the guesthouse where we used wifi to reply to messages nd what not. Went to bed early in order to be awake for an early start!