Vientiane & Visas

It all seemed simple when we were in Luang Prabang ? Having read that there were very few queues at The Chnese consulate in Vientiane we decided to apply for our visas once we were here. We arrived having booked 4 nights at a hotel with a fitness room & pool to while away the 4 days that the visa would take to process. The process seemed relatively straightforward  based on the information available on the consulate site. We had to have proof of our flights into & out of China & where we were staying and there was a suggestion on a travel site that we might need to prove by a bank statement that we were able to survive  our period of stay - presumably they did not want us to be a burden on the Chinese state. We booked flights in to Kunming & thought that proof of an onward flight (albeit) from Sydney to LA would prove our intention to leave. We also arranged some hotels in the first 3 places we had chosen to visit & contacted a chinese tour company about a three cornered tour of Shanghai,Xian,Beijing at the end. I made the rash assumption that this provided an outline itinerary with a gap in the middle in which we could arrange a Yangtse river trip.
All of this took a couple of days. Completing the forms, 6 pages)  including an extra 2 as we were not applying from our home country was relatively easy & we copied all of the documentation including our passports & set off to walk to where the consulate was. Unfortunately the tiny symbol on the free schematic map we had turned out to be much further away than it looked and to be the Russian embassy ! Once we realised we hopped into a tuk tuk in the hope that we could get there before closing time @ 11.30. Fantastic - we made it. This was not goiod enough as we were informed that we had to have proof of booking for everyday of our planned stay & our actual flight booking out of China i.e. we had to book 30 days of accommodation and or tour plus flights & hope that we got visas ! Back to the drawing board !*?!