Anyway we took a 10 hour sleeper bus from Pakxe to Vientiane with rows of bunk beds that you look at and think it looks like quite a decent sized bed, until you realise its meant to be for two. I hogged a bed to myself and it turned out to be quite a nice sleep - they give you water, biscuits, soy milk, face towels and mints - way better than England!

We checked into Sabaidee guesthouse which is where we said we'd meet the girls after the arrived, and it turned out to be a shithole, basically the worst place we'd stayed so far - the staff were so unfriendly and unhelpful, the place smelt really bad, the shared bathrooms weren't clean, loads of insects etc. So we drove in a tuk tuk to pick the girls up fromt he airport after I'd got a traditional Lao massage of course, and they had all the freshness of new travellers. We stayed chatting and gossiping in the guesthosue for ages before joining the boys in a bar by Nam Phou fountain, listening to live music by a Lao singer doing really bad covers of Oasis and Enrique Inglesias.

We originally wanted to leave Vientiane the next day but found out from a guy staying in one of the dorms that because we were travelling overland to Thailand from Laos, they would only issue us a 15 day Thai visa, so if we wanted to stay in Thailand longer we would have to apply for a visa at the embassy here. Which meant we had an extra day to see the main sights of Vientiane.. which we didn't end up seeing because we went swimming instead