Ubon and Chong Mek Laos border trip

[landofsmiles]

Part 1>>>

Needed to do a border run for a 90-day stamp and as I know a lady in Ubon Ratchathani which is about 100k from the Laos border thought it an opportunity to see another part of "real" Thailand as opposed to "disneyland" Phuket.

Flew AirAsia...5400baht roundtrip....3 hour connection at BKK eachway. Flight arrives Ubon 3pm. ThaiAir have 3 flights a day from BKK too. The airport is right alongside the city and with over 800,000 inhabitants it was a lot bigger than I expected. Many people seem to confuse Ubon (Ratchathani) with Udon (Thani) and think they're the same place but look on the map and you'll see UDon is in the north part of Isaan...UBon is to the east.

Only took a few minutes on the back of my friends bike to the Regent Palace Hotel just off the main 3-lane highway (Chayangkul Road) that runs south/north through Ubon. 650baht/night included breakfast...I'd give it about 3*...was good enough for me. Couldn't stay with my friend in her room as she has one of her sons living with her and she's no longer "that sort" of friend as she's engaged to a guy from the US and now has a settlement visa to go and live there once the custody battle is resolved to get her other son away from her ex-husband.

No internet in the hotel but there's a shop in the road alongside...10baht/hour!...bit noisy though full of kids playing games much of the time. Found a car/bike rental shop a couple of streets up and rented a bike for 1000baht for a week.

Ubon is not a tourist destination and has no big attractions other then the Candle Festival at the end of July and there's really nothing much to see as a visitor apart from the large park at the south end of the city that gets busy every evening with people jogging along the path next to the waterfilled moat full of fish that runs around the edge of the park and 100's doing organised dancerobics!

I liked having days around Ubon when I didn't see another farang...went into BigC at the weekend when it was heaving yet still didn't see one. Only saw 4 or 5 others the whole week.

It was good to get out on the bike and ride out of town into the countryside. All around Ubon it is very FLAT and ricefarming is the main activity. You can see in the pics below a typical "farm" behind the village of Pa Ao about 15k north of Ubon...a few rai of land with the house, usually a few cows or waterbuffalo and some chickens. If your girl says she's going home to work on the farm...this is where she SHOULD be.

The Moon River (not sure if it's the same one Andy Williams? sang about!) runs past Ubon on its' way to the Mekong and one afternoon we rode down road 23 to Had Ku Dua where there are dozens of raft restaurants floating on the river and had a very peaceful afternoon there, eating and sleeping only being disturbed occasionally by women coming alongside in boats with fruit to sell plus assorted fried insects and beetles; small frogs and crabs and even black scorpions which I passed on, sometimes a sandcarrying barge would chug past or a longboat rowing crew in training.

We pigged out all afternoon on big freshwater prawns; a whole roast chicken; fried vegetables; lychees; longan; rambutan; 2 big bottles of Leo for me and fried bugs for her and her son...total cost 400baht. It gets really busy at weekends with locals...the afternoon we were there though the only other people around were some off-duty policemen with a few college girls! Definitely recommend it as a great way to experience some "real" Thailand - a world away from the "disneyland" tourist areas.

The Regent has a Spa attached to it...had to take a pic of the sign near the entrance! If you want a proper Thai Massage though I'd recommend the Spa and Holistic Massage shop 2 streets north of the Regent. Very tastefully decorated; large individual massage rooms with TV and piped music and 300baht for 2 hours. After a Patong massage lady had put me in hospital, in Ubon a lady called Narm restored my faith in Thai massage...she was that good I went back for a second go although that time was spoilt slightly by the Thai Air Force launching some F16s from the base at Ubon airport to do circuits...and the shop is right on final approach to the runway.

There's a fair amount of nightlife in Ubon but naturally the set up is Thai for Thai which means mostly karaoke bars (where ladies are available)...500baht ST appeared to be the going rate...not that I indulged. There's a few massage places about where specials are on the menu like PP Massage behind the Regent Palace and others that you need a Thai to tell you what and where they are as all the signwriting is in Thai on the darkened windows.

There's a few "western" style bars such as the Swing Party bar; Cowboy and Indian; Playboy bar with a live band. In a corner of the Pathumrat Hotel carpark...a few hundred metres from the Regent, is the Felice Club which has Coyote dancers that are barfineable....don't ask me how much though.

The big difference going to a bar in Ubon opposed to one in Patong is that most of the customers are Thai men. Another noticeable difference travelling around Ubon is unlike Patong where the girls go around wearing very little and with their @rsecheeks poking out the bottom of their shorts, in Ubon they are fairly well covered up wearing jeans or the office/shopworkers and the uni/polytechnic girls are in their black skirts and white or blue blouses.

Pics below...sorry poor quality...need a new camera>>>>

1. Typical farm
2. Regent Palace Spa sign
3. Ubon airbase gate guardians
4. Had Ku Dua raft restaurant on the Moon River
5. Mother and son in the Moon river
6. Rowing training

Part 2 to follow...the border run to Chong Mek

[pablo]

Great report.

Anxiously awaiting part 2.



Pablo

[landofsmiles]

Originally Posted by Alfie

The big question is, did you get any night life pics??? 5555555....

I didn't and I'm embarrassed to say I let the side down by going the whole week without sampling the ladies! Thing is I tend to over-indulge living in Patong and everyday I was up in Ubon I kept thinking to myself "I'm going back to Phuket in a few days!" so I didn't bother.

[dogblower]

Been there many times, both Ubon and Chong Mek. A couple of times I went with the then GF's family and cruised the market, both sides of the border, and hauled a pickup truckload of stuff back to the village.

Love the quieter pace up there and did a fair bit of fun stuff with the family going to waterfalls and swimming in the local rivers, including the Moon River, and visiting some of the Khmer ruins. Went over to Sri Saket (next province) and visited Khao Phra Viharn too and would recommend going there if you can.

I've also made a couple of solo trips to Ubon, just cruising around Isaan playing tourist. There's plenty of nightlife around and prices are way cheaper than Phuket, Pattaya etc. P4P is available, and has been sampled, in pretty much every provincial capital I've ever visited around Thailand.

Also sampled the P4P scene in Pakse and Savannakhet, though not for a couple of years now, and the prices were laughable compared to LOS. I have some photos somewhere but won't be able to post anything for a few weeks until I get back home.

[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>>>>

[Nicke]

Great report, must have missed it when you first posted it. Hope to see more of neighbour countries in the future.

[fun2have]

nice report, and it makes me miss the issan, i can picture it as i sit here at work.

[K2]

Interesting and enjoable reading trip report L.O.S. - perhaps someday will venture to Isaan when in search of laid back break from Disneyland.

[priced]

Loved the post and pics. I too travel to the Issan area a lot. I stay away from Bangkok and all the tourist areas. Found out I can have a wonderful time along the mekong and spend less money.