Journey to the West - Crossing the Border between Thailand and Laos

The Summary: Heading to Luang Prabang from Chiang Rai. 3 hours bus ride to Huay Xai for 65 Baht each. Pass border to Laos, visa for 30 USD each. 2 days on slow boat along the beautiful Mekong river for 35 USD each until Luang Prabang. Hotels average 10 USD per night. Best boat and bus rides ever!

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The Experience

First time talking to a Buddhist monk for an hour in Huay Xai, Laos

After a fairly short bus ride from Chiang Rai to Chiang Khong, it took us an hour to cross the border from Thailand to Laos at the Friendship Bridge next to Huay Xai. The long wait was due to exchanging money into USD and waiting for the visa to be stamped. You can get a visa on arrival for most of the Western countries when you arrive in Laos by land or air. You need to pay in USD at this particular crossing. They only had 100 USD bills. If we used any other currency, either they wouldn't accept them or they would markup the price by more than 50%. Curiously, if you pay Laos border control in Laos Kip, you pay 50% more than if you were to pay in USD. It was one of those ironies in life.

Us in a bus from Chiang Rai to Chiang Khong. No air conditioning, open doors

The bus ride was the most spectacular in my life. I couldn't stop watching either side of the bus lest I miss anything beautiful.

Beautiful, steep hills like those in Avatar

Clear rice fields in perfect squares and rectangles

When we arrived in Laos, we spotted a Welcome sign. It was very cute.

I wish to know what was written underneath

Then we were escorted to our hotel.

Beautiful and spacious guesthouse close to the border

We were delighted about the food and the hotel. We were waiting one night for the next slow boat to carry us to Luang Prabang via an overnight stay at Pak Beng.

When we arrived at the border of Laos, we were approached by a guy who sold us transport from the border to the hotel and to the boat plus the boat tickets. Initially, I didn't trust him at all thinking it must be a scam. The first day was fine but when we reached Pak Beng, we were finally scammed because the guy charged us double for a shabby hotel full of mold. So, we learned never to trust anyone approaching us for selling tickets or accommodation directly at stations or borders. We will always book online to get the best prices and information.

After we settled in our hotel, we made a short visit around us and found this curious and yet unknown fruit. If you know it's name, please comment to tell me. It was sweet and sour in it's taste.

There was a village just alongside one single road full of colonial buildings, restaurants and hotels. We didn't know but Laos was colonised by the French. Some older people can still speak French.

After visiting the village, we discovered a beautiful staircase leading into a temple. We went up of course.

Lots of little kids were also serving as novices, some of them are about 8 years old

There, we met a monk to whom we spoke in English, French and also Chinese. He told us that the temple housed more than 80 monks.

He was very eager to train his foreign languages with us. So, we spent a fair amount of time together chatting. I found out that the monasteries in Thai and Laos Buddhism are decentralised and each have their own rules although there are similarities. They would wear slightly different ropes although most of the time it would be in orange. There are two main classes of monk, the forest and the city monks. The forest monks live in harsher conditions that would resemble more the conditions set up by the historical Buddha. They have over 200 rules that they must obey, one of which is celebacy. They meditate twice a day, usually one hour each. They would wake up early in the morning and go on alms round together. The entire crowd of 80 something monks of that monastery would go down the stairs in sync and get food offered to them by locals. They don't ask for food. They will be naturally offered food and necessities of life such as tooth paste or soap by local people to whom in return they would teach wisdom of life and become their counsellor. Usually, the monks cannot grow or store their food so they need to get offerings everyday from the locals. This in turn encourages them to teach the locals on a daily basis. The Buddhist system is set up so that lay people would be able to train generosity by daily offerings and Buddhist monks would not retreat too far as to be hermit all the time because they need the support of lay people. It is a marvellous concept and I love Buddhism for that. No wonder all the people we met in Thailand and Laos were very friendly and generous. It was not uncommon to receive gifts such as fruits or food from the locals.

After the monk chat, we went for dinner in a restaurant that had a boat statue inside. The pizza and pasta were quite delicious.

We ended our day by getting the only cider that I like, Bruntys.

Then, she made me make a cute face to beg to go to bed. Let's make a meme out of it. Something like:

"When you want to get stuff you need, beg with big eyes like a cat."

If we are here already let's throw in a cute cat picture that we took at the restaurant.

How did you like our trip? Did you go to where we went? Share with is your advice and experiences in a comment. I always reply to comments.

If you wish to see the beautiful pictures alongside the Mekong river and how the slow boat looks like, then follow my blog to get notified of my next post.

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Read even more from the Journey to the West series. Start from the top.

The Begin
Donated Rear Panniers
Last Shopping
Buying Supplies
The Map
First Day of Ride
If it Rains, it's Not Laziness
Long Ride in Shenzhen
The First Mistake and How We Fixed It
Don't Give Up the Bike Tour
Last Days in China
Biking Thailand Starts in Chiang Mai
Updated Travel Mode in Chiang Rai

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