This morning started off just as hectic as Hanoi had been to us already. Thinking we had set our alarm for 5am in order to catch our 6am bus, it turned out that we had set it for 6am!! Luckily we awoke at 5:58am & turned into the Usain Bolts of the bag packing world, making it on to our bus for 6:03am. It was a 9 hour drive to the Vietnam/Laos border & our driver, a man that looked like the typical Vietnam criminals portrayed in the A-Team, had little disregard for bumpy roads, which left us with sore heads after hitting the roof of the bus multiple times. Immediately after crossing the border the weather suddenly became sunnier & sunnier. I also noticed a massive increase in the number of dogs in Laos, which made me wonder where they all were in Vietnam & whether that was actually pork I had in my noodles the other day!! We arrived in our overnight stop which was a small place called Lak Xao. It was literally one street, with one restaurant, our hotel & no pub!!! Thankfully the hotel had a good supply of Beer Lao. Our room had a balcony, so I cracked out the shorts & sunglasses from the bottom of my bag, dusted them off & enjoyed the fiery ball of light that had returned to our skies!