I felt such a sense of relief as I sat outside the great big gold temple-like construction that passed for an arrivals building on the Laos side of the border. I was filling in my application form to get my 30-day visa, and I was taking my time about it. It had been exactly four months since I had cycled out of Almaty and began on my absurd quest that took me 11,500 kilometres across Kazakhstan, Siberia, Mongolia and China. Discounting my week off in Lanzhou I'd averaged exactly 100 kilometres per day over that whole period, and this was now the first time in a very long time that I did not need to rush. Filling in that form was an absolute pleasure. I savoured every second of it. The visa man who had given me the form was wonderful too, a very jolly fellow who asked me about my trip and excitedly explained that Laos was soon opening up an embassy in London and he had great ambitions to soon be sent to work there. "I usually have an important job in Vientiane" he said, keen to stress that he had only temporarily been sent out here to dish out the visas at this remote outpost. His friendly demeanour was in keeping with his other colleagues (and in sharp contrast to the Chinese border officials I'd just been dealing with, one of whom had been asleep) and I was made to feel positively welcome into Laos.

But I also now had motivation not to slacken off my pace just yet. I didn't know where Dea was - I only had that slightly cryptic message from her bicycle indicating that she was taking a bus to the north of the country. It looked to me like the biggest town that she'd be able to reach by bus was Namor, a further 45 kilometres south from where I was. But if that was where she was then so be it, I wanted to get there and see her, and I still had the afternoon to push on to Namor. Or, in other words, my life after rushing was going to begin by rushing.

I received my visa from the jolly fellow and wished him good luck in London, and then had to leave the building from the way that I came and take my bike through on the road. As the border official there, who incidentally was also jolly jolly, thumbed through my passport to check the visa I glanced ahead to the Laos side and saw a blue bicycle parked up on the grass. Because I was very tired and have a tendency to be somewhat stupid my first thought was that it was Alex's bike, and that he had got to the border before me and there he was waiting for me. But, looking more closely, I realised that it wasn't Alex's bike, and so I then, continuing to act like a fool, thought that it must belong to one of the other local guys standing nearby. Then at last, finally coming to my senses, I noticed the beautiful blonde girl sitting on the kerb next to the bike. I broke into a huge smile. More than any other this here was the moment when all of the weight disappeared from above me, all of the pressures and stress of the last few weeks and months dissolved. It was over. I didn't have to rush to Namor. I didn't have to rush anywhere now. Dea was here.

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My passport was returned with a smile and I rushed over to see Dea just as if it were a movie scene. Wait a minute, there was a movie going to be made about this whole journey wasn't there?! I'd forgotten about that. So, yeah, okay, Ryan Gosling rushes over to Charlize Theron and, carefully remembering his mistake from Lanzhou railway station, doesn't call her very tall.

"You look beautiful!" I said to her, with a sense of pride in my new-found compliment-giving abilities.

"Thank you" she said. Then she looked me up and down. I looked down at myself.

"I'm sorry I look like a tramp" I said, "I didn't have a chance to..."

"That's okay," she laughed, "you always do!"

And then she kissed me.

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Boten looked suspiciously like China. The shops were all Chinese, the big buildings looked Chinese, even the street signs were all in the Chinese script. We stopped to get something to eat, and ended up in the kitchen of the restaurant pointing at things to try to explain what we wanted. It took a while to find the eggs. If only Alex had been with us! But we finally ordered something and asked how much it would cost, only to be shown the price in Chinese yuan! It was like my worst nightmare - I'd cycled out of China and arrived into China. Thank goodness Dea was there to calm my nerves.

It would be very nice if I could say that we then cycled on together out of Boten, but what actually happened was that Dea cycled very quickly ahead of me out of Boten and into the Laos countryside, whilst I laboured slowly far behind her. Now that I no longer needed to be cycling anywhere my whole body objected to the concept with quite some ferocity, and my brain now had very little to offer in convincing reasons why I should keep turning the pedals anymore. The best that my brain could offer was 'we need to catch up with the beautiful girl that came all this way to cycle with us' but my body countered that with 'nahhh, lets just collapse in the bushes, she'll come back and find us.' As it happened my brain won, but, when I did catch up with my energetic and excited new cycling companion as she stopped to wait for me, I was quick to suggest that my tired body would really appreciate stopping and finding somewhere to sleep as soon as possible.

Fortunately Dea, being all nice and that, was very understanding, and agreed. And even more fortunately, because Laos has become a popular tourist destination in recent years, we found a suitable guesthouse just eight kilometres after the border. "Great job! Well done Dea, eight kilometres. It's your first day cycle touring, it's probably best not to overdo it. Lets sleep here!"

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We were out of China now. After Boten, that mysterious Chinese town on the wrong side of the border, the real Laos had started. Our road had weaved gently downhill through sparse forest, dotted with bamboo huts, before arriving in this small settlement where the guesthouse was. As darkness descended we sat outside and talked excitedly about the adventures that lay ahead of us. Three other guests were sitting around a table at the front of the guesthouse too, and they invited the two of us to join them. They were young and all from Laos, and introduced themselves as Dow and Fun and Mr Ha. Dow was an excitable girl who gave an enthusiastic thumbs up to the fact that we were traveling by bicycle. She went to the shops and bought us all a can of BeerLao and handed them around. Then they also offered us some of the food that they were eating, which mostly consisted of some unknown meat on skewers. Naturally I politely declined but Dea, not being a vegetarian, tucked in. "What is it?" we asked. The English of our new friends wasn't very good, but the answer we got from Mr Ha very definitely did sound like "puppy."

After that Mr Ha helped us to learn some Lao. I actually had the time now to immerse myself a little in a country instead of just racing across it, and I intended to do just that. Luckily Lao appeared to be a very simple language, with most of the words seeming to consist of a single syllable, and I soon mastered the all important "I no eat meat." Mr Ha was great, teaching me also some of the beautiful Lao script, which consists of a sensible number of characters not entirely dissimilar to the roman alphabet and yet quite different, and much more twirly. I liked the letters very much, and I liked the sound of the language. Maybe I had finally found my second language (as an Englishman I naturally have never bothered to master a second language. I don't feel bad about this, because as I understand it this is true of all Englishmen.)

Dow and Mr Ha provided us with a really great introduction to Laos, its people, and its language. As for Fun, well she failed to live up to her name, sitting watching videos on her phone and eating more than her fair share of puppy. But this was a special night, and not even Fun could spoil the fun. Dea got out her ukulele and the sound of her sweet voice pierced the stillness of the night. Her voice was so beautiful, so real, and it made me so happy. She finished and the noise of the insects chippering incessantly away took over the airwaves. Moths flittered around a single bulb above us, as I looked around me and tried to make sense of this wonderful scene. It was almost impossible for me to comprehend that just the morning before I had woken up in China completely stressed, cycling with Alex, with no idea that I would ever even see Dea again. In two short days my whole world had changed. I felt like I was seeing things through new eyes, and everything was so, so good. And it was all ahead of us.