How To: Getting to Laos
1. From your cheap guesthouse in Siem Reap (Angkor Wat's home) buy a ticket (4 bucks) to Poipet at the Cambodia/Thailand border. The guy at the guesthouse may tell you the bus leaves at 8am, but that could mean as early as 7:30 or as late as 9am. When it arrives to scoop you up, don't expect anyone to tell you what to do with your bag, and don't be annoyed when it ends up in the aisle of the 20-seater mini-bus and has 17 dusty shoe prints by the end of the trip. You will probably be sitting by one of the sweet windows that opens, but you'll also be covered by a sheen of red dust after the bumpy 6 hour journey. Expect to find dust in your bra that evening.
2. Everyone gets off the bus in Poipet, but you are probably going to be the only one not getting on a different bus to cross the border and further trek to Bangkok. Just walk away from their Package Deal and find a moto (motorbike/cycle taxi) on the street. Have the guy take you to the border.
2. Go through Cambodian immigration, and walk 100 hundred meters to Thai immigration. The guy with the forms may ignore you, so be persistent. Fill them out, get questioned and hopefully stamped. Walk another 200 hundred meters- this time past all the tour buses and their minions.Walk around confused in the stifling heat, ask someone where the bus station is. They point west.
3. Start walking and ask someone else. It is 7 kilometers west. Take a moto taxi to the bus station. Don't be mad if the driver ignores the 9kilos on your back and drives 90kph.
4. Arrive at the 'bus station' without any information. Look at your book and choose a city on the road to the Thai/Laos border nearest. Get lucky and find a bus leaving in 10 minutes. Forget about peeing and try to enjoy the fancy 4 hours in comfort.
5. Arrive in Bari Rum around 7:30pm. Get a cheap room with a small television and OMG cable. Watch American Idol by satellite, but you won't find out if Tifani makes it because the connection cuts out. The room is 210 baht for the night- about 5 dollars.
6. Wake up at 6:30am, get ready leisurely and head to the train station to check the schedule for Ubon Rathathani. Find out that the best train leaves in 20 minutes. Run back to the hotel, gather your things, check out and run to make the train. Make sure you sit next to a Thai guy who speaks some kind of pig latin and buys several portions of fried grasshoppers, snapping them in his mouth joyfully.
7. Upon arrival, argue with a moto driver about the cost for a ride to the Warin Market, where you're likely to get a bus. Plan to pee at the market, don't worry about it now.
8. You have seen no other falangs (foreigners) since the border, but you seem to be expected at the market. As you climb from the moto, a severely pregnant woman hanging out of a slowly moving bus yells to you "CHONG MEK? CHONG MEK!" Yeah, you shrug, and she ushers you on. The driver says "Phibun! You go! Change bus Chong Mek. OK!?" No time to pee.
9. The bus is hot and sticky, crowded with smiling Thai, their eyes glued to a television set showing a national comedy sketch show in which squeaky whines and beat-em-ups dominate. Don't mind that, something pulls your eyes to the door. Something looks out of place. What is that? It looks as if one of the cushioned seat backs has split- is that cotton? Oh, no, it is just a PRAYING MANTIS. You can't take your eyes off it. Is that real? Then it starts to move, along a rail and finally along the door frame where it licks and ponders. Take pictures. An hour later at Phibun Mangsahan, you're still staring. Be careful leaving the bus, walking under it. Take a photo close-up. The driver will laugh at you.
10. A sawngthaew (a truck with two rows of benches along the bed and a roof) seems to be waiting for you. Go to Chong Mek.
11. Once at the station in Chong Mek, take a moto taxi to the Thai/Laos border. On the Thai side, you pass several small offices before the correct one for your departure stamp. Make sure to spend a few minutes listening to the angel-voiced blind musician. Give him some money- paper money, please. On the Laotian side, good luck finding the office. You'll pass a bevy and even small market area before the proper station. Find out you unnecessarily got your pricey Visa in Phnom Penh because they now offer visas on arrival at the crossing. Get cheated by an officer who claims there is an "immigration card" fee even though you have one given to you by the Laos consulate in Cambodia. Curse him.
12. Take an unneeded moto Taxi to the the sawngthaew stop for Pakse, across the Mekong.
13. The Sawngthaew driver wants the Kip (local currency) equivalent of a buck for the 1 hour ride. Seems fair, and the only one going the whole way of the 20 squished in. Women with bundles of lives ducks and chickens, baskets of noodles and fruit, file in and out, as the vehicle seems to stop every kilometer.
14. Once in Pakse take a jumbo to a guesthouse. Make sure the guesthouse is full so you have to walk around a while before finding another place.
Welcome to Laos!
2. Everyone gets off the bus in Poipet, but you are probably going to be the only one not getting on a different bus to cross the border and further trek to Bangkok. Just walk away from their Package Deal and find a moto (motorbike/cycle taxi) on the street. Have the guy take you to the border.
2. Go through Cambodian immigration, and walk 100 hundred meters to Thai immigration. The guy with the forms may ignore you, so be persistent. Fill them out, get questioned and hopefully stamped. Walk another 200 hundred meters- this time past all the tour buses and their minions.Walk around confused in the stifling heat, ask someone where the bus station is. They point west.
3. Start walking and ask someone else. It is 7 kilometers west. Take a moto taxi to the bus station. Don't be mad if the driver ignores the 9kilos on your back and drives 90kph.
4. Arrive at the 'bus station' without any information. Look at your book and choose a city on the road to the Thai/Laos border nearest. Get lucky and find a bus leaving in 10 minutes. Forget about peeing and try to enjoy the fancy 4 hours in comfort.
5. Arrive in Bari Rum around 7:30pm. Get a cheap room with a small television and OMG cable. Watch American Idol by satellite, but you won't find out if Tifani makes it because the connection cuts out. The room is 210 baht for the night- about 5 dollars.
6. Wake up at 6:30am, get ready leisurely and head to the train station to check the schedule for Ubon Rathathani. Find out that the best train leaves in 20 minutes. Run back to the hotel, gather your things, check out and run to make the train. Make sure you sit next to a Thai guy who speaks some kind of pig latin and buys several portions of fried grasshoppers, snapping them in his mouth joyfully.
7. Upon arrival, argue with a moto driver about the cost for a ride to the Warin Market, where you're likely to get a bus. Plan to pee at the market, don't worry about it now.
8. You have seen no other falangs (foreigners) since the border, but you seem to be expected at the market. As you climb from the moto, a severely pregnant woman hanging out of a slowly moving bus yells to you "CHONG MEK? CHONG MEK!" Yeah, you shrug, and she ushers you on. The driver says "Phibun! You go! Change bus Chong Mek. OK!?" No time to pee.
9. The bus is hot and sticky, crowded with smiling Thai, their eyes glued to a television set showing a national comedy sketch show in which squeaky whines and beat-em-ups dominate. Don't mind that, something pulls your eyes to the door. Something looks out of place. What is that? It looks as if one of the cushioned seat backs has split- is that cotton? Oh, no, it is just a PRAYING MANTIS. You can't take your eyes off it. Is that real? Then it starts to move, along a rail and finally along the door frame where it licks and ponders. Take pictures. An hour later at Phibun Mangsahan, you're still staring. Be careful leaving the bus, walking under it. Take a photo close-up. The driver will laugh at you.
10. A sawngthaew (a truck with two rows of benches along the bed and a roof) seems to be waiting for you. Go to Chong Mek.
11. Once at the station in Chong Mek, take a moto taxi to the Thai/Laos border. On the Thai side, you pass several small offices before the correct one for your departure stamp. Make sure to spend a few minutes listening to the angel-voiced blind musician. Give him some money- paper money, please. On the Laotian side, good luck finding the office. You'll pass a bevy and even small market area before the proper station. Find out you unnecessarily got your pricey Visa in Phnom Penh because they now offer visas on arrival at the crossing. Get cheated by an officer who claims there is an "immigration card" fee even though you have one given to you by the Laos consulate in Cambodia. Curse him.
12. Take an unneeded moto Taxi to the the sawngthaew stop for Pakse, across the Mekong.
13. The Sawngthaew driver wants the Kip (local currency) equivalent of a buck for the 1 hour ride. Seems fair, and the only one going the whole way of the 20 squished in. Women with bundles of lives ducks and chickens, baskets of noodles and fruit, file in and out, as the vehicle seems to stop every kilometer.
14. Once in Pakse take a jumbo to a guesthouse. Make sure the guesthouse is full so you have to walk around a while before finding another place.
Welcome to Laos!
5 Comments:
You're holding us in suspense about when it was you finally got to pee.
I'm drinking over 3 liters of water a day- often without pee breaks! It is kind of nice. On both days there was no peeing before reaching the hotel. With this update, are you relieved as I was? GET IT?!?
great post! let's see the mantis!
But then, once you're there, you've earned it ;)
fantastic! this should have been the format of the whole blog. next thing you know: globepequot spins off traveldiaries.com to be the webs next hottest aggregator of travel "How-Tos" (the new format for the genra) and spins of trendy full color over-priced over-sized coffee books the first of which of course is titled the micronomicon and you are launched into a cushy life of travel and writing until age 37 at which point you retire to south east asia never to be heard from again, except of course in the then common-place practice of blog syndication. or wait... did that already happen?
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