Travelling to Khon Kaen

Last night I started calling accommodation and guest houses in Northern Laos and started believing the rumors. Due to the fact that I'm on the border to Laos and just across the 'Friendship Bridge' is Vientiane, the capital of Laos, many people had been telling me about it. Basically, in their words, it's incredibly expensive, very touristy and over populated. When I started calling around the cheapest budget room I could find was $14 dollars, which instantly meant it was a no go for me.
Although I know I could cut across and go 'Tubing' and see the 'jars' I didn't think it was worth it, even bus transportation there is about triple the price, whilst the road network is close to none excistent, meaning trips take double as long.
Therefore this morning, I woke up, packed my bags and started heading to the East of Thailand to another border crossing to get info as to whether it'd be worth going to the 4000 islands and Southern Laos.
I boarded my bus at 11am and started heading to Ubon Ratchathani, planning to get of there. Once again this didn't go to plan. The busses here are slow at the best of times and you get checked frequently for terroists onboard. All due to the Airport problems of last month and 'safety in Thailand' principle. Much to my surprise however, it was for good reason today, when we got stopped they actually found something of danger on board. I still don't know what it was but it ended up two people being taken away by police over a package stored in a lower compartment. Orginally I saw the women trying to bribe the police man, but this didn't work at all. She was taken away with the gentleman she was with, a couple other people got of the bus and then we continued an hour later.
By now it was 15:00 and I had nearly had enough for a day, it had become stressfull and wasn't working out. To make matters worse it was the end of school so every 100metres we were picking up/dropping of school kids, so at 19:00 I got of at Khon Kaen a major city to the South of Nong Kai. Once I arrived I walked around for 1hr with my backpack in search of the cheapest accommodation, once I found it (100Bh a night, £2) I slept!