[landofsmiles]

Part 2

The plan to get my 90-day stamp was to go to the checkpoint at Chong Mek, cross into Laos and stay a night in Pakse with my friend and her 2 kids coming along. There are buses from Ubon to Chong Mek but they leave VERY early in the morning. They're usually those converted trucks with the "natural" air-conditioning and they also take 3+ hours to do the 100k stopping in a couple of towns on the way. Certainly didn't appeal to me...I don't do buses. I asked about a taxi from the hotel - 1500baht one-way to Chong Mek.

So my friend found a friend of a friend to take us for 1000baht and we left the hotel at 11am on the saturday in an almost new Chevrolet Coronado pickup...nice, comfortable, quick way to go. Roads are good all the way; through a large town called Phibun Mangsahan; past a huge lake and then with about 10kms to go it starts to get foresty and hilly.

It took 80 minutes to get to Chong Mek Check Point and just a few seconds for me to get stamped out of Thailand at the Departure Desk...no queue. The many Thais making the crossing go to a seperate office to be processed and after about 15 minutes my friend returned with some bad news. They wouldn't allow her to go into Laos to stay because she didn't have the birth certificates or photos for the children. So we had to revert to Plan B. She could get a day pass to cross with the kids which is what most of the Thais were doing to visit the market and duty free on the other side of the fence...the condition is they have to be back on Thai soil by 6pm I believe.

So we left our bags on the Thai side and walked down the path past the border security into Laos heading for the immigration office 200m down on the righthand side. Again no queue...no other farangs about...so I stand at the darkened window with a small hole cut in the bottom for about 5 minutes without anyone appearing eventually crouching down to look through the hole I see an officer sat playing a computer game and presumably on completing whatever level of the game he was on reluctantly came to hand me the forms to fill in...first time I've ever had to fill in my "race" as well as "nationality" on a form!

On the outside wall is a large sign with the price listing in US$ by country for the visas ranging from $30 up to $42 depending on which country you are from. Laos appears to have something against Canadians as Canada was up there at the $42 fee on its' own. Of course I didn't have any $ with me so to pay my $35 fee I had to hand over 1500baht so I got screwed just slightly there on the exchange! After a few minutes I'm called back to the window where the officer tells me to go to a different window round the corner of the building no more than 5 metres away where a different officer asks me for 70baht to give my passport back to me. Clearly a "tea money" collecting exercise as no receipt is given but probably unwise to question this charge with them as they might just decide not to let you have your passport back.

So all that was simple enough...in just a few minutes I'd got a Laos visa in my passport.

Meanwhile, my friend had called our driver who was heading back to Ubon and got her to make her way back to the checkpoint to pick us up. So we stayed on the Laos side for about 15 minutes. There's a few shops and restaurants and a market on the hillside although nothing much appealed to me I felt I had to buy a memento of my first visit to Laos so bought a 6-pack of Beer Laos! Had to laugh at some of the "brand" names eg. cigarettes called JONNEE BLACK and HONGHUA...100baht for 200.

Back on the Thai side just a few minutes for me to fill in the Immigration Form and get stamped back in...making sure I checked the validity on the stamp in my passport before we left...90days :-) So off we went in the pickup again to see some of the sights in the area. My friend has a "farm" in the area as she calls it, with 3000 rubber trees on it. It's such a long way from her home in Ubon because the land is so cheap near the border...she paid 5000baht per rai. So we headed towards it but didn't go to it in the end. After about 5kms we arrived at a barrier to a National park and were going in to look at a waterfall but the old woman at the gate said the entry fee was 20baht each for the 2 Thai women; 10baht each for the kids and 400baht for me. Stuff that. The stupid thing is I would have begrudgingly paid maybe 40baht so they would have got 100 out of us...instead they ended up with nothing because we turned round and drove off.

A few kms down the road my friend suddenly shouts at the driver to stop who stands on the brakes and I nearly went through the windscreen. We reversed back to where there were 2 women and children sat at the roadside with a bucket. In the bucket were some very dodgy looking multicoloured mushrooms and she bought the lot for 80 baht saying she couldn't get them in Ubon like that assuring me that they were not the sort that gave you a funny head! So off we go, round the next bend in the road and guess what?....a line of 5 or 6 stalls at the roadside selling nothing but....multicoloured mushrooms!!

After another 15kms or so we drove into possibly the cleanest Thai town I've ever been in called Khong Chiam...there's a yellow rubbish bin about every 20metres...it's situated at the peninsula where the Moon River joins the Mekong and is also known as Two Colour River although at this time of the year because of the rains both rivers are the same brown colour. We went down to the edge of the Mekong and ate at a restaurant...had some huge freshwater prawns that were blue before they went in the pot...maybe they weren't prawns! tasted great anyway and what a scenic peaceful spot to eat sitting on the Thai side with Laos the other side of the river.

After eating we drove up the hillside and had a look around the Wat which is worth a visit if only for the view looking down on the Mekong then it was getting late so off we went back to Ubon arriving an hour later.

So my Laos visit ended as just a border run....maybe next time I'll venture inside but more likely it will be over the Friendship bridge near Nong Khai as that's somewhere else I want to go.

Pics of dodgy mushrooms and the mighty Mekong with Laos in the background>>>>