South of Laos

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.” Socrates

The more we travel in Southeast Asia, the more I want to go to Europe.  As soon as we left Myanmar, we made a decision to go to Europe, instead of going to Malaysia and Indonesia.  We were still planning to go to Cambodia from Laos.  During our last week in Laos, we decided to skip Cambodia and go to Sri Lanka instead, maybe India.  We allowing ourselves to change our minds as often as we feel like it.  Our money is running out, and we want to use it to enjoy our last months of travelling the most.

The closer we got to Cambodia, the more travelers we met arriving from Cambodia.  We heard their stories, and concluded that Cambodia was very similar to Laos.  Changing our minds at the last moment did cause us some trouble.  If we were not going to Cambodia, we had to go to Thailand.  Bangkok is the hub for the cheapest flights to anywhere.  Also, Dangis wanted to visit a dentist there.  And we could enjoy some of the luxuries that are available only in Thailand, and not in the surrounding countries, like coin-laundry machines.  Also, Thai food is tastier, and internet is faster.

First of all, our Laos visa was running out, so we needed to leave the country.  A day before going to Don Det, I caught a cold.  Don Det is one of 4,000 islands in Mekong River, located in the south of Laos.  We could see Cambodian mountains on the other side of the river from our bungalow.  Every stand-alone bush in the river had to be considered an island for the total number of island to add up to 4,000.  Anyway, Don Det was a good place to recuperate.  The whole island seemed to be in relaxed mood with weed being freely available to all its inhabitants.  

We rented ourselves an inexpensive bungalow on the shore of the river, where we got the most beautiful views of the sunset.  We spent most of our days in our hammocks reading, only interrupted by having a need to eat 3 times a day.  We chatted with other travelers while lounging in the restaurants, waiting for food.  A lot of times it took more than an hour for the food to arrive, as all of it was made from scratch, and the cooks were probably high on weed.  Eight days passed like that, and we were ready to leave the island the next day.  That evening I fell and sprained my ankle.  We delayed our leave by a day. 

In the boat across the river, we met a Lithuanian couple from Vilnius, Aide and Romas.  We were also in the same bus to Pakse, except they got off in Champasak.  They were very interesting conversationalists.  We stayed couple days in Pakse before leaving to Ubon in Thailand.  Again, we met our new Lithuanian friends in our guesthouse that day.  We spend all morning together chatting some more, sharing our travelling experiences.  It was a great pleasure.  We said our goodbyes one more time, and left with a bus to Ubon. 

After paying an overtime fee at Lao border (Sunday), we got the exit stamps.  At Thai border we learned that the visa-on-arrival was not available.  We were allowed in the country only to take our bags out of our bus waiting for everybody on Thai side of the border.  We got our Lao exit stamps cancelled before returning to Pakse.  We had 3 more days to leave Laos.  We even managed to get half of our money back for bus tickets to Ubon.   It was already evening.  We decided to spend it with our Lithuanian friends. 

We had 3 options for leaving Laos before our visa expired.  First, we could go to Cambodia, as originally planned.  Second, we could go back north to Savannakhet to receive a Thai visa.  Third, we could go back even further north to Vientiane, where we could receive Thai visa-on-arrival on the border. 

The next morning we left for Savannakhet (second option).  There was just enough time to receive Thai visa on the day our Lao visa expired.  We successfully managed to leave Laos that day, finally.

Once again, we enjoyed the food and the hot shower enormously in the little Thai border town of Mukdahan.