Laos for Three Hours

We really did go to Laos!

Well, not for long, but a couple hours counts, right?! Since our thailand 60 day visas were about to expire, The Prancers set out for a daytrip to Laos, popularly called a "visa run". This consists of hopping the border into a neighboring country and then crossing back over into Thailand to renew for 30 days. Easy enough, huh? Well, not so fast.....

Staying at Eldon's home in SamBerDang gave us fairly quick access to the country of Laos, about a 1.5 hour drive to the nearest Laos border crossing. Upon reaching the border by car with BunLeung and Eldon, directions were given - a couple of times - on how to manuveur through the whole process as they set the somewhat unconfident Prancers on their own. We walked down the steep flight of stairs after buying our boarding pass to the slowboat which would cross the Mighty Mekong River. The river setting is quite beautiful if you ignore the muddy waters. We boarded the back of the boat as the chill in the air that day lured us towards the nonshaded seats without overhang to bask in the sun. Once again the "farangs" got many smiles and waves from all the thais aboard. The ride over was nice to Laos, taking only 20 minutes or so in an open air boat, although it seemed much longer due to the everlasting gas fumes pouring into our lungs and the hungover fat thai dressed in military gear puking last night's whiskey and raw beef/garlic/chili dinner overboard beside us. Jill's queezy belly was not happy about that! But, the views were gorgeous otherwise....

We arrived to the Laos side, all ready to rock and roll through the process of 1-2-3, as it was explained to us. But of course, chaos and confusion was waiting for us right through the door to the immigration office. Without going into too many details, to put it frankly, the whole thing seemed like a complete mess. No one spoke a lick of English that worked the offices. We were sent here and there and back to here and then to there again over and over. We ended up missing the boat ride back we wanted to jump on and had to wait a couple of hours until the next one left. We went into the streets of Laos, noticing the immediate economic change from Thailand. It was quite charming though as we stood on the river edge and spoke with 3 young monks whom loved pracitising their spotty English with us. Then we roamed over to a Laos/French restaraunt and enjoyed a bit of Laos food.

Returning back to the office to finish the duty, we officially had left the country of thailand and were ready to return. After getting conflicting information and advice from the few straggler westerners we could locate, finally a Scottish man took the upper hand with us and literally dragged us along with him onto the next boat already spilling over with people and cargo. We sat in the front this time, Jill's feet literally hanging over the boat as we perched on someone's sack of potatoes and rice and filled out our entry cards to Thailand. We were still confused as to why we didn't have to pay the 1500 baht fee back at the Laos office. And we didn't figure it out until arriving back to Thailand and pondering it ourselves. The big confusion with our situation is that we already had Laos visas in our passports as most people don't when they come to the border, so they need to buy them. We had been told as we went to Laos we would pay a 1500 baht fee to reenter thailand, not a 1500 baht fee to enter Laos. See the difference? The fee is actually to enter Laos, not thailand and we already had Laos visas. To enter Thailand, it is only 40 baht!!! We kept trying to pay the Laos government 1500 baht and they wouldn't take it. DUH, b/c we already have Laos visas and didn't need to pay to enter their country (weeks before we sent our passports off to Bangkok and paid the 1500 baht Laos visa fee). We just needed a stamp in our visas showing we were in Laos, walk up through a set of stairs to "officially" be in the country and then walk down the same set of steps to "officially" leave the country again. Then as we would arrive back in Thailand (via slowboat) we would pay the cheap 40 baht ($1) price to re-enter the country. That might sound confusing to you all. But the real deal is that we figured it all out after the fact and were happy we didn't have to pay another 1500 baht.

So, Eldon and BunLueng had been waiting for hours for the Prancers in the car. But we still had time to make our next destination of the day: a magnificient new Buddhist temple about 1.5 hours away. This temple was in construction for over 20 years, being built by the king of Thailand's daughter. Construction was haulted a few years ago due to "lack of funds" on her part but will soon start up again. It was amazing! Definitely the most memorable of the temples for us so far. It's beauty literally stung us! The grounds were amazingly manicured and temple and complex itself dynamite. The view from the top was vast and breathtaking and very windy! It was so neat to see half of the temple being complete and the other half in construction. It gave us a real sense of the fine detail that goes into something this intricate and done by hand. The pictures will not do it justice, but we have a few to give you an idea. WOW!