We left the bush camp joining the motorway/Main Road almost immediately. The road as yesterday passed through fields of bananas and also went through numerous tunnels. we skirted another major expansion to a city with lots of cranes in the skyline. Just before the border we stopped at a new Petrol Station (with no shop stock for the toilets and filled up with water and diesel.
We arrived at the border (Mo Hai) at about 09:30, changed our Yen (& some US$) for Laos Kip (lots of female money changers) then officially left China. On the Laos side the Visa procedures was pretty chaotic, but we could pay for the Visa in Yen, Kip or US$. The clocks went back 1 hr. so we were now only 6 hrs.' ahead of the UK. Customs control seemed to be none existent, just a passport check and we made our way to our lunch stop at the small town of Luangnam Tha.
The countryside , houses, and people were immediately different – the countryside and villages were much poorer and lots of children were around the wooden houses (many on stilts). We passed an elephant hauling materials on the road and the roads soon deteriorated into windy hilly narrow roads suffering from road repairs and landslips – in places we were driving effectively on mud tracks where the soil had slipped from the banks. In this hilly countryside it was difficult to find a bush camp site, but we eventually found a small layby and pulled off the road puncturing a front tyre as we did so. Dusk was quickly upon as as the tents were erected very close to each other on the bush camp. Toni and I (with Laura) were on cook duty this evening so we opted to sleep on the Truck rather than try to shoehorn 2 more tents on to the confined space.
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