Over the border

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Day 15 - Monday 15 October 2007

Today we cross the border into Laos (pronounced Lao).

Crossing was a pretty easy affair. After making the 1k trip from our guesthouse to the border we joined the queue to get our exit stamp. When we arrived we were surprised to see the Danish couple from the trekking also in the queue. They'd actually arrived at 3am to find everything shut up and deserted so had to sit on a bench until morning.

Russ went to one booth and got charged 5 Baht for his exit stamp, I went to the next one and didn't pay anything. Thats how things work over here.

Once we had our exit stamps we walked down the river and paid our 20 B plus an extra 10 B for our bags for the ferry across the border to Laos.

Once off the boat immigration was chaos as everybody else had crossed early that morning as well so we could all catch the only slow boat of the day to Luang Prabang at 11:30 am. Being British we had to pay $35 for our visa rather than the standard $30, although some countries pay even more. And thats it we had arrived.

A mad dash to the ferry which we made with moments to spare and we were on the slow boat down the Mekong river to Luang Prabang. As the boat doesn't travel at night the journey will take two days with an overnight stop at Pakbang.

If things were cheap in North Thailand they are even cheaper in Laos. We managed to negotiate ourselves an en suite room for just 55p each and a big bottle of stella strength beer is 50p.

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