Dien Bien Phu /Tay Trang to Muang Khua, Laos - NIGHTMARE!!

This will be known as the day from Hell, things nearly got worse then the New Zealand entry saga! We arrived on time for our bus, this bus was much comfier and had more legroom, well at first it did. The bus pulled around the corner from the bus station about 15 minutes later and waited there for another bus, the bus had a heap of cargo which was pulled off and then all the men on the bus (mostly the tourists) had to help get this stuff on the roof of the bus! We had to lift up god knows what on the roof, all I know is it took all the strength of several of us and some Vietnamese on the roof to get some of the packages up there, so after that stalling we assumed we'd be on our merry way, not quite..every so often the bus would stop and more people of stuff would get on, the packages and potato sacks were stacked to the roof, along with a few passengers on the floor. The bus also dipped to one side, but this was a local bus, as resilient as they come apparently. So we didn't leave Dien Bien Phi until after 7:30am, 2 hours after arriving at the bus.

We arrived at Tay Trang an Hour Later it was only a short 35km journey and the road was certainly dodgy in spots, but looks as if there's lots of work on the way. The exit was pretty straight forward and hassle free, we were in and out within half an hour. Next it was a further 6kms to the Laos Border, here's where the fun began.

On arrival we were given our H1N1 test basically your temperature is taken, We filled out all the paperwork,etc,etc and handed in our passports, Visa was granted on arrival and there was just the matter of payment, I handed the border official the $100 bill and he scanned it through the machine and it rejected it, 4 times he slung it back to me and said he wouldn't take it, all I had left was $38 and some dong, and I needed $70 plus sundries (we'll get to that in a minute), I asked did they take credit card and they wouldn't, we were screwed..I knew I had a bad feeling about that $100 bill that CUNT in Dien Bien Phu gave us. The French couple, Tony and Estelle (Thierry Henry, all is forgiven! :) )that were on our bus yesterday out of the goodness of their hearts lent us the $40 we were short, magic! situation averted for now....or was it. We paid the Visa Fee $35, The Visa on arrival fee $1, The H1N1 check 2000kip and a 3000kip service fee....more sundries then a main car dealer. We left the border after an hour and a half as they are uber slow processing in Laos.

We headed for Muang Khua and when we arrived the bus dropped us on the other side of the river, a boat took us across for the 2 second crossing, 2000kip (25cent) for the massive journey. We headed up the hill looking for a bank where we met a guest house owner with excellent English, he showed us the way to the bank and then told us where his guesthouse was if we wanted to stay there. We went into 2 banks looking to exchange money or get some more money as we'd only $15 or so in our pockets and a heap of useless ATM cards, the 2 banks wouldn't touch the $100 bill, the banks had Western Union and I was this close to ringing home for some emergency funds, but the bank was going to close in 15 minutes and it would be closed tomorrow due to a national holiday....you couldn't make this stuff up.

We had a look in a guesthouse in town that was OK but we waited for the French couple to sort out how we were going to repay them, they went with the guy from earlier and said the guesthouse was nice so we decided to give it a look. We crossed the dodgiest bridge ever, a long steel cable bridge with big gaping holes here and there, the bridge swayed from side to side. We arrived at the guesthouse and were greeted by the owner we met on the street earlier, he'd asked how I'd got on with the bank and I told him our story, he got us our room and told me to hop onto his motorbike and headed into town to try and exchange the $100 bill. He took me to a Chinese shop and the guy had a look at the bill and didn't seem keen, he rang his Dad who came a few minutes later by bicycle and had a look, 3 people were now examining the bill, the guy from the guesthouse was doing his best to get them to exchange it but they couldn't risk it and I definitely understand why. He told me not to worry and he'd drop me to the bus to get to the nearest ATM, which was 3 hours away!!!!

As far as I know we'd gotten the last room here and lucky that was, the room was nothing exceptional, but the family meal was delicious, a steal at a modest 10000kip per person, the staff constantly topping up your glass with Lao Lao rice whisky..which had a Poitin-esque taste to it. There was a good few travellers there the first night we had the meal, and I think the adrenalin from the days antics kept us up. We met an American guy cycling around Laos called Jason, we were telling him our story and he agreed to exchange our bill for kip for a slightly worse rate then the black market, but it beat heading 6 hours on a bus! He said he could spend it when he returned home, everyone was happy!...Time to breath and hit the hay.

[The issue with the $100 bill: It was a series 1996 bill which didn't have a chip, the series date is beside Franklins head on the bill, in Asia they will only take series 2004 and upwards, news to me, but that prick in the jewellers knew full well what he was doing]