14th June - Dien Bien Phu to Muang Khua (Laos)

We slept better than we had in a few days and woke up at 3.30am feeling ok but a bit foggy. 

After showering and packing I was hungry and had time time to mull over the aesthetic difference between Matt's maggots and my 'caterpillar' (why does that sound rude?)  and so considered giving the lychees another bash. I picked up the bag to pluck one out and was very startled when suddenly it started shaking extremely vigourously and I saw something green furiously wriggling about. I screamed and hurled it, trying to mentally process the overnight transformation of the caterpillar. As it landed, I was relieved when a familiar gecko scurried out and under the bed.

We were over at the bus-stand early and bagged a seat with ample leg room. There's always the risk of having a huge sack of rice or someone elses bag shoved under your legs and so filled the space with ourselves and our hand luggage and hoped for the best. People did keep shoving massive boxes and other objects at us through the window but most of the time, we passed it on and it disappeared out of the dorr and on to the roof.

The bus was mostly full of Westerners and we chatted to Nick and Sam from the UK for a while. Many of the people on the bus has travelled with them from Sapa the previous day and so there was a general air of comfortable silence.

The border crossing from Vietnam was fairly straighforward although they tried to send Matt off without giving him his passport back because they thought the picture on his was of a girl! The Laos border crossing was much more long-winded and they kept trying us all for additional 'fees' and holding our passports to ransom. It wasn't very expensive but it was annoying and Matt and Nick were the last bastions of stubborness and so did a little male bonding.

We took a lunch stop at a little cafe and debated changing some money with the bus driver but decided to hold out for a better rate and so payed with Vietnam Dong. Unfortunately, I came across a manky tofu which exploded in my mouth and covered my tongue with foul-tasting liquid which refused to budge and so I found myself wishing for green peaches again.

Upon our arrival at the village of Muang Khua, we were made to alight from the bus and watch a man travel across the dividing river on the ferry - a floating platform clearly designed for buses and trucks which was pushed by what looked like an old US patrol boat and guided by a cable system. We were then crammed onto a tiny boat with all of our bags and charged to be rowed across.

We were met by a mature American guy who was hoping we would be taking an onward boat trip down the river to Nong Khiaw. He'd been in the village for a week just waiting for someone else to come so that the boat would run. We suggested we might all do the trip the following day and he receommended the hotel where he'd been staying.

We still didn't have an Laos Kip so our first stops were frustrating attempts to change the stack of Dong we'd had to bring because we were out of dollars. The exchange rate was terrible but we had no choice - who would have thought a bud-driver would offer the best rate?

We checked into hotel with most of our other fellow bus passengers and after a shower and a rest on the communal balcony, went to explore the tiny village a little more. There wasn't much to see but we did brave the suspension bridge, which shook, swayed and clanked quite scarily as people sped past us on mopeds.

The road we had travelled on was still being built and so we watched the locals clearing trees by hand and sitting watching the big digger clearing a passage through the hills, as kids on bikes made a BMX-style track over the progress they'd already made.

Back at hotel we chatted on the balcony with our bus-mates: Miriam and Amber (2 Kiwi girls who were biking around Asia), Lucy and Vince (a french couple in their last 2 weeks of a year-long trip), and Sam and Nick (both nurses from the UK).

Went for a drink and were joned by our last 2 bus friends, Miriam and Sander. They were only travelling a few weeks a much bigger budget than us and so had checked in elsewhere. They both had interesting jobs and we discussed Miriam's work as a Communications Specialist (one of the top 5 or 10 in Holland apparently) and Sander's work as a radio DJ and general media darling before heading back to get some rest before our boat journey the following day.