Entry to Laos

After another excellent breakfast with fresh bread, we start our journey to Laos. We only drive about 2.5 hours by bus to Chiang Khong in northern Thailand.

There we get our exit stamp for Thailand and get back on the bus that takes us across Friendship Bridge 4. The bridge crosses the coffee-brown Mekong River and connects Chiang Khong and Huay Xai. Until 2013, people were still being shuttled across the Mekong River by longtail boats. Since the opening of the bridge, this is now only reserved for locals and tourists have to take the bridge. On the Laotian side, we get off the bus again and go to immigration. For $30, we get our visa on arrival and the entry stamp and are allowed to stay in the country for 30 days. After immigration, we get back on the bus that takes us to the Huay Xai bus station. Before that, we briefly become millionaires at the ATM ;) 1€ is about 10,000 Kip. The entry was really quick and easy.

At the bus station, we are told that the next bus to Luang Prabang will be in 5 hours. Phew, so we have plenty of time. We explore the village, eat rice, and then sit in an Amazon café, where we can have cake, iced coffee, and wifi. And it is at this very moment that I am writing this blog post. Now I am one of those people sitting in the cafe with a tablet, looking very busy.

At 6 p.m., we take the bus to Luang Prabang, which is about 500km away. We have a 13-hour drive ahead of us. Yippee. The bus is a sleeping bus, which I have only seen in Laos so far. The bus is full of sleeping bunks. In Germany, something like that would be unthinkable for safety reasons, but for a 13-hour drive, I think the concept is not bad at all. Of course, the bunks are designed for Asian body sizes and Max and I have to fold ourselves together in the shared bunk. That would be a damn cozy 13 hours, with limbs getting squished. Luckily, Max asks if maybe we can each get a bunk, because there is still space on the bus, and we actually get the double bed at the end of the bus, which is designed for 5 Laotians. If we lie diagonally, we can even stretch out! The Europeans who join late and have to share a bunk with strangers look at us with envy and ask how we managed that and if we bribed the driver. Just being there early enough and asking politely :) You might think we have a relaxing bus ride ahead of us, but we haven't taken the road conditions into account. We are flying through the countryside and regularly lose contact with the ground, so it's difficult to sleep. Maybe sharing a tight bunk together would have been better after all? At least you would be fixed in place. But if you look out the window and see the roads, it's no wonder the ride is bumpy. Clearly, asphalt thieves were at work! The potholes are huge and for some time there is no road surface at all, just a dirt track.

But we actually arrive at the bus station in Luang Prabang 15 minutes early, around 7 a.m. We quickly wake up to be able to negotiate with the tuk-tuk drivers and not get ripped off. They want to be paid in advance and drop us off somewhere in the city center. An Australian woman is already pulling out her wallet. You can tell: she hasn't been traveling for long. We never pay in advance and certainly don't let ourselves be thrown out anywhere. After Max and I make it clear to each of the 5 men who come to us one after the other to collect the money that we will only pay at the hostel, they give in and actually take us to our hostel. The Australian woman should be happy about that too.