As January came to an end, our Cambodian visas were set to expire – it was time to move on to Laos. We arrived on the Island of Don Khone, Laos on Feb 1st 2017.
Traveling into a new country is always a little unnerving as you never know what to expect at the border crossing. Our arranged transportation from Cambodia to Laos was a combined bus/boat trip.
We assumed once we arrived at the border, the bus would stop on the Cambodia side. Everyone would disembark with their luggage, walk across the border into Laos, apply for visas, and then board a different bus to take us to our destinations. While you could opt for the “do-it-yourself” method (mentioned previously), the bus company we chose had an english speaking liaison on-board who offered to do the Laos visas for us. During our 2+ hour ride in Cambodia on the way to the Laos border, he came around to all of us and explained the process. We were to give him our visa fee, our passports, and then relax with the bus at a rest area before leaving Cambodia (you could see the border crossing from the rest stop). The “do-it-yourself” option meant walking 2 km with luggage in the heat of the day and meeting the bus on the other side. At first, we were leery about handing our passports over, but another traveler reassured us this was a normal practice at other border crossings and it worked well. It also didn’t appear to be much more of a fee, if any, than the standard visa fee once you figured the usual “extra” fees foreigners typically are charged for leaving Cambodia and entering Laos – these extra fees are sometimes called their “Christmas fund”.
We opted for the bus company to handle our visas and hoped for the best…,as did the majority of the others on the bus. The liaison hopped on a moto with a huge stack of passports in hand and rode away. We all kind of laughed and said “we sure hoped this was legit”. As it turned out (1 hour and 20 minutes later), the man came riding back with passports in hand and said “let’s go”. We re-boarded the bus, were given our passports, and simply drove out of Cambodia, through the dead zone, and into Laos. The actual border crossing took just a few minutes and we did not have to get out of our seats or off the bus.
It was a huge success 🙂 It was 5pm, we were in Laos. With only a short shuttle to the ferry and our boat ride to Don Khone, we should have been to our final destination at Pan’s Bungalows by 6pm.
Unfortunately, there was an extremely unruly young woman traveler. While attempting to board the shuttle vehicle to the dock, the woman became irate when the driver asked her to sit in the vehicle as opposed to sitting on the roof with a few of the men. As part of Laos culture and for safety reasons, it is prohibited for women to sit up top. When she refused, the driver asked her to get out of the truck. We sat for nearly 30 minutes before he agreed to drive us to the boat dock where our ferry awaited.
As we loaded the boat, the woman continued with her tirade. For over an hour, both the locals and the woman argued on whether or not she should be allowed to travel on the boat to Don Dhet. By the time we left and arrived on Don Dhet, it was dark and the ferry captain refused to take 4 of us to rest of the way to Don Khone. Luckily, we were able to find a local with a small long boat to take us across the river in the dark. The local definitely knew his way around the narrow and shallow channels and got us to Don Khone safely around 8pm. We found our accommodation within minutes of the dock and had enough time to check in, grab some dinner and have a few ice cold beers with a friend we met on the ferry ride.
See video and photos below highlighting our days in Don Khone, Laos. To see all images of this location click the link at the bottom of this post or go to our gallery.
