Farewell to Laos
From Luang Nam Tha to Chaing Mai in Thailand. Explore Farewell to Laos through our first-hand travel stories, photos, routes, practical tips and experiences.
The day has finally arrived for us to travel from Laos to northern Thailand. There were no minibuses heading that way today, so once again, we hopped on the local bus. It cost 75,000 kip per ticket. This time, the bus was, if possible, in even worse condition than the others we’ve traveled on. It was totally falling apart inside. It’s incredible that it could still manage to drive through the mountains! We were lucky, though, because the road has just been improved, although they’re not quite finished yet. Previously, there was a stretch of 40 km that took 4 hours to navigate. Now the whole trip takes just 4 hours. So that’s a huge improvement! We were headed to the border town of Huay Xin, which is one of the places where you can cross into Thailand. It cost 5,000 kip to leave Laos on the weekend. There was a handwritten sign that read: Due to overtime on the weekend. We had 400,000 kip left, which is about 40 dollars, and we exchanged it at the border. We got a good rate. The Mekong River separates Laos and Thailand, so we had to take a little boat across before we could enter Thailand. Unfortunately, I got really carsick from the bumpy ride in that terrible bus, so as soon as we checked in at the Thai border, I had to run over and throw up by the gate into Thailand. Welcome! We took a taxi to Chiang Rai, which is about 1.5 hours from the border. It’s obviously a bit pricey, but still much cheaper than in Denmark—1,000 baht. Lately, we’ve been fantasizing about food that isn’t served with rice. So our first meal in Thailand was at Pizza Company—yum! We’re staying almost right by the night market, which is a smaller version of the night market in Chiang Mai. For the last few days of our trip, we plan to shop, get some clothes tailored, and just relax. After wandering around the night market, we treated ourselves to a massage. It was 150 baht for a one-hour foot massage or a full-body Thai massage. By the way, the baht has gotten cheaper compared to the Danish krone. Previously, we had to divide by 5; now it’s 6.