Monday 4th June

We got woken up by the driver and urged to get out of the bus, it was 6:15 am and I was tired, and I jumped off the bus and walked. We walked past a dead border control and stood at the other end waiting for the staff to start working!

We had to pay $1 for an exit stamp…hmmm…doesn't seem right, but we paid it and were on our way through no man's land. It was a long way to walk through no man's land! We finally found a border looking building and entered inside to fill in our visa forms. No problem paid the customs guard and off we went to board the bus again.

It was a very quick process, we got back on the bus and the driver communicated to me by pointing at the clock (at first I thought he was pointing to the speedo!) and said 2 pm. Well if he could get us that by 2 pm that's two hours ahead of schedule! I nodded and headed to my seat before falling in and out of sleep!

Before I did, I noticed how the countryside was beautiful; we were rolling up and down the mountains, completely empty roads. It was lush!

We finally arrived at Vientiane at a busy bus stop some 9km out of town. We were shuffled onto a tuk-tuk, tuk-tuk's here are any form of transport converted to house two rows of seats either side of the vehicle! We jumped on not knowing where we were and headed into town. Our bags were shoved on top, not strapped down, I stupidly made a comment; 'my bag is going to fall off!' Which 30 seconds later my wish came true! We shouted at the driver and Stu jumped out and ran down the road to pick it, narrowly missed by a few trucks coming behind us!! Luckily nothing breakable lives in my big bag!

We were dropped off at the popular backpacker area and we headed down the street towards our chosen hostel. This was the first time we didn't book a hostel, it was ok, we asked to check the room out and it was fine paid the staff our money and relaxed in the room and had a well-earned shower!

After showering we sat down in the outside section to relax and think about our plans for Laos, which is a HUGE (and expensive) list!

We have decided to stay in Vientiane for a couple of days before moving to Vang Vieng for the 'party' town. We then are going to go to the countryside in Luang Prabang before heading towards the Thai border and stopping in Huay Xai to stay in the tree houses at the Gibbon experience!

Stefan the Austrian from the bus turned up and asked if we wanted to go to dinner/beer, which we jumped at the offer and off we went trawling the riverside to find something suitable. We found a family run restaurant with beer for 10,000 kip (8,000 kip to the $1, it's all very confusing!) and sat down and had some food. I took the prime opportunity to get myself a curry! We all literally stuffed ourselves! The first time I have felt full since leaving Cambodia!

We managed to find a beer garden round the corner that was quiet and sat and had a few more beers before retreating to bed. It had been a long journey and we all needed a good sleep!

Tuesday 5th June

We woke up and had our free breakfast, which is AMAZING! Who ever invented curry for breakfast is a genius!

We did some research as Stefan said he didn't think we could get Thai visas at the border, as in longer than 15 days! Which we believe is true; this also puts a spanner in the works! We now have to stay an extra 3 days in order to get our visa processed. Never mind!

We quickly ran to the printing shop and printed out copies of visa application and returned to the hostel and waited to meet up with Stefan. We decided to do the Laos national museum and the COPE centre.

The national museum, as described in the guidebook, is a little run down. It definitely could do with some TLC! The museum had an awful lot on show from dinosaurs to modern day Laos. There wasn't a lot of English script; I ended up translating the French description for Stu and me!

After the museum we hurried to the COPE centre, thinking it was going to shut at 3 pm, luckily the guidebook was out of date and was still open till 6 pm! We were welcomed very warmly by one of the staff members and told us to enjoy looking round and to find him if we had any questions. The COPE centre is to help support victims of UXO (unexploded ordnance) and they provide clinical mentoring and training for local staff to manufacture high-tech but low-cost artificial limbs and rehabilitation activities. This service is provided free to the people of Laos, and helps more than just victims of UXO. They rely mainly on huge donors. It was a very moving exhibit and we spent plenty of time looking at all the stories. There were some scary and fascinating facts that I didn't know about Laos:

· Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the world per capita.

· More than 580,000 bombing missions were conducted over Laos. That is one bombing mission every 8 minutes, 24 hours and day, for 9 years

· Over 2 million tone of ordnance were dropped on Laos between 1964-1973

· More than 270 million bombies were dropped onto Laos

· Up to 30% failed to detonate and still remain in Laos

· Approximately 80 million unexploded bombies remain in Laos

· More than 50,000 people have been killed or injured from UXO between 1964-2011

It's all very scary figures; there was a fantastic sculpture of what a bombies looked like. The outer shell of the bomb would part and each case would have up to 680 individual cluster bombs, each with a killing radius of 30 meters.

We walked around the exhibit and watched a video of an interview with the parents of a boy who died from a UXO. People in Laos have foraged for the UXO to sell as scrap metal, the young boy and his two friends found these and were banging them together. Causing the bombies to explode wounding them and then eventually died. It is very sad, as these children clearly didn't know what they were. There were some fantastic stories of people visiting the clinic depressed and unhappy due to loss limbs, eventually getting an artificial limb and being able to be 'normal' again.

We gave a donation and grabbed some ice cream, where it proceeds to rain and we hid out till it had died down!

We walked all the way back to the hostel and had a shower before heading out for dinner again. We went to a BBQ restaurant and order a huge amount of food, which we demolished happily! We went to a rooftop bar that I had seen, which gave some great views of the area. Stu's t-shirt he was wearing (Monkey Island) caught the attention of some less than welcomed characters. Unfortunately they hung around us and made conversation. I ignored what was going on and talked to Stefan, while Stu was stuck in conversation with these characters. Luckily they left after 30 minutes and we moved swiftly on back to our beer garden.

I went to bed early seeing the three beer Lao I had yesterday gave me the worst hangover ever and slept it off!

Wednesday 6th June

We woke up early, ate our breakfast and headed to the Thai embassy to get our visas sorted, first we had to quickly stop and get some more mug shots taken! We arrived at the embassy and stuck our newly photographed selves onto the form and took and number and waited. Our driver who took us here urged us to queue up, which we did knowing full well we had to wait our turn. We managed to get to the front of the queue, after waiting for an age and had our applications almost complete, until one French guy who got told to wait, (he was number 130, we were 100 and the current number was 95!) he kicked up a fuss for no reason, and we were also benched until our numbers came up.

After an age, our numbers came up and handed the forms in quickly and moved onto pay for our visas. We assumed (not that it didn't really say you couldn't) that we could pay with US dollars, quite a generic currency. Apparently no, you need Thai Baht. Crap!!! Where can we get some? We ran out the embassy, it was 11:25 and it shut at 12:00, and asked our driver where we could get Baht from. The women from the stall outside the embassy said she had some, she did give us a horrendous exchange rate, luckily Stu managed to barter with her and we got a decent rate. We ran back in and paid for our visas. Mission accomplished! We hope it is ok for us to pick them up tomorrow afternoon.

We returned back to town and had some well-earned lunch! I had something plain as my stomach wasn't feeling too good!

We returned to the hostel, and I managed to get all up to date with the blog! Woo!!! Can't believe I remember what I did every day!

We ventured out for some dinner and bumped into a French couple Stu meet yesterday and had dinner with them. I left early seeing as I felt really ill and wasn't much company, but then again, the French were hung over too!!

We woke up after an hour and watched a very impressive lighting show! It was pretty cool to watch for 10 minutes!

Thursday 7th June

Firstly, happy birthday to Louisa! I have sent you your birthday present, hopeful it may get to you by Christmas time…!

We woke up and had breakfast and headed out to see the oldest temple in the city.

We came back to the hostel and went to the internet café across the street; internet in Laos is not amazing! We checked out a few hostels in Vang Vieng, but we decided to wing it again! We had a bit of time to kill before we got a lift to the embassy to pick up our visas!

There was already a huge queue waiting to enter the embassy we managed to get a number and waited for a relatively short time before our number was called and we are now in procession of our last visa!

We returned to the hostel I slept for a few hours as I was still feeling pretty ill and tried to sleep it off. We went for dinner at our usual haunt and I had something plain hoping my stomach would appreciate it more!

We stopped at the night market to purchase a few items, mainly a painting for $2, what a bargain!

We got back to the hostel where I pretty much passed out! Hoping I'll feel better for the bus tomorrow to Vang Vieng!