We finally had to drag ourselves away from the beautiful seclusion of Bamboo Nest and make our way into Laos! Our visa for Thailand was about to run out, otherwise we could have stayed there forever.
We got on a proper 'local people' bus and it took us down to Chiang Kong so that we could get a boat across the Mekong into Laos. This was all detailed in the Lonely Planet and had been confirmed by lots of people so we were very confident that we knew what we were doing. But no...