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VISAS,TRANSPORT etc (July/August 1997)

Visas
These were arranged very easily through the Ban Tamilla River View Guest House (very pleasant) in Chiang Khong. I forget the price but it was what we expected and included transport over the river to Huay Xai. We arrived in Chiang Khong on Monday afternoon and crossed the following morning.

When we arrived at Luang Prabang by slow boat from Pak Beng we should have got our visa stamped where we landed. They would not stamp it in the town but insisted that we went back to the pier immigration. This took time as there are lots of landing stages and we did not know which one.

We could not extend our visas in Luang Prabang. They said we had to go to Vientiane.

One Kip Bank notes

Money
Could be changed at the boat landing stage/immigration in Laos.

We found that the prices seemed much higher if we paid with dollars. We took a lot of baht and changed most to kips, but sometimes it was cheaper to pay for rooms in baht. We needed a calculator to keep track, especially as exchange rates changed rapidly. We could not change kips back to baht or dollars in Pakse.

The problem with kips is that they come in big bundles, in fact the bank may give you a carrier bag to put them in. We found nowhere to change money or travelers cheques south of Pakse.

At Pak Beng there was only electricity for a very short while in the evening.

Transport
We had no problem getting seats on the flight from Luang Prabang to Vientiane one day before travelling. But there were very few tourists in Laos (July and August).

Vientiane to Savannakhet - Senesabay autobus service - telephone 218052. This was a good bus with a very helpful manger who accompanied us on the journey and pointed out the highlights. This is a new tourist bus service, although most of the passengers were Lao. It left at 7am, which was earlier than the time we were told when we phoned to book.

Savannakhet - we stayed in the Mekong guest house. We had to get to the bus station for 5am and explained this the night before when we paid our bill. However the next morning the gates were locked and we had to climb over a very high fence to get out. There were no tuk tuks so we started to walk. Lots of dogs started barking at us as we went past but they did not come close. We found tuk tuks at the market where people were arranging their vegetables in the dark.

The bus for Pakse left at 5am prompt. 8 hours, quite bad road which is not yet tarred.

Pakse back to Thailand - We made the mistake of going over on the free car ferry, so we had to walk a lot to find transport. We should have got a small boat which would have landed where there were taxis. We got a taxi to the border post. The taxis at the border wanted an enormous fee to take us to Ubon so we did not go there. We waited at the border and at 4.00pm a comfortable bus arrived which took us straight to Bangkok.

Mosquitoes
We only saw a couple - on Don Khong island. Perhaps it was too wet for them.

Bags
We were glad we did not take much with us as we sometimes had to carry it quite a long way.

Boats
It really was wet and muddy and slippery on river banks. Also boats are boarded by walking along a thin plank of wood, we needed shoes with a good grip.

Books
We used both Lonely Planet Laos(1997) and Laos Handbook (Footprint) which we found more useful for some places. Lonely Planet Lao Phrasebook was also useful.