Back over the bridge to Thailand

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Geo: 16.3833, 103.933

A decent nights sleep and as we are in no hurry to leave we have a liesurely lie in.
Another baguette with a couple of glasses of steaming hot Laos Bolivan coffee for breakfast and I am ready to face the world - or Laos and Thai immigration at least. Back to the room for a shower and change before checking out at about 9:30. Take a tuk-tuk - or Skylab as they call them here - to the bus station where we are just in time for the 9:40 departure International Bus.
There are no problems today on either side of the bridge and by 10:30 we have arrived at Mukdahan bus station.
We sit to wait for the 12:15 Pink Bus unless we can scrounge our way onto one of the earlier Bangkok bound buses. These do not like to sell tickets for short journeys as there is obviously more money for them if they can fill up with Bangkok bound passengers. They eventually tell us that they will sell us a ticket just as our Pink Bus arrives at the station. You didnt want us and now we dont want you !!
Leave Mukdahan at 12
;15 and arrive back in Phon Thong just before 14:00 getting dropped off right outside the house where weleft the bike. I now notice that they have other cars with easy numberplates; '2222', '7777', '9999' and a motorbike with '111'.
We stop at the 7/11 for some bread and milk then bike back to Khamnadie for a welcome cup of tea and piece of cake before retiring to the garden for a doze.
The night before we left here the mains water stopped and it has not returned since. By all accounts we will have no more mains water until the rains come in four or five months time - if they come this year ! In the meantime people are trying to use the old handpumps that are dotted around the village. Welcome back to village life.

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