It's Sunday night (actually by the time I post this, it'll be later because I got to typing and then suddenly it was 2am and Amanda was all: "Go to bed we have to be up at 6:30.") and we are absolutely exhausted! We've been to Laos and back... and Laos and back.
TLDR: We went to Laos. We got visas. It was an adventure. We're back now.
Everything started on Wednesday. We taught until 11:10am and then got a ride from Tum to the bus station. From the bus station, we boarded a small van (imagine the cargo van my dad used to drive for work, subtract the smell of reptiles and books, and add fifteen smelly people) and set off for Udon Thani.
Udon Thani is a bit more than an hour van ride from Nong Khai - almost directly south on a map. Google maps says 58 minutes, but she forgets that the van driver needed to stop to go to the bathroom, pick up some people in random places, and let a lady selling chickens into the van to display her wares.
From UT, we rushed from one bus station to the other. It was a ... three block walk? Not bad, but we didn't know where we were going so the whole time both our faces were: O.o
Needless to say, we saw 0% of UT. All I know is that it exists on the map.
We got to the other station and started looking for a bus to Mukdahan. Mukdahan is directly next to the border by our destination city: Savannakhet.
Do not let this map lie to you: this van ride was definitely about 7 hours long. And I want to accentuate the word VAN. I, a delicate flower, was expecting a bus. Instead, I was smashed between Amanda and ... some random guy. He did not smell delightful. I'm not sure I did either, though, so I will not read him any more to filth than 'he did not smell delightful'. Our backpacks were on our laps the whole time and while we did stop about 25 times, we did not get off once.
As soon as we got off of the van to Mukdahan, we started searching for a bus to Laos.
At this point, we discovered that the LAST bus for Laos for the day was leaving in 10 minutes. We threw our baht at the lovely ticket lady and ran (guys - Amanda RAN) to the bus.
This was an actual, real-live bus. We were on it for... maybe 20 minutes?
This is the trick to crossing the Thai-Lao boarder: fake it til you make it.
On the bus, we ran into our MediaKids Orientation Alum/friend Hailey. We jabbered the whole time on the bus about our different experiences. She seemed to have the same sort of general complaints about MK that we have: school swap at the last moment, nobody knows what is going on, no support documentation, and problems with English communication within MK staff.
For help, I've labeled the map below with 1-4. I will reference them as such.
At point 1, we boarded the bus.
At point 2, we got off the bus, realized Hailey was on our bus, got our exit stamp for Thailand, and boarded the bus again.
At point 3, we got off the bus, filled out two pieces of paper: a Lao Visa On Arrival and a Lao Arrival Card. We paid 1500 baht each and were ushered into the country. (It was a bit sad to see all the other people waltz through the line, pay nothing, and simply get back on the bus...) We then got back on the bus and took off for point 4.
At point 4, we got off the bus and all celebrated arriving at our destination. We weren't quite done travelling, but we made it into Laos before the boarder closed, all got our Lao tourist visas, and were, frankly, exhausted.
Thankfully, Laos is just as full of Tuk Tuks as Thailand is. We hailed a driver and showed him a screenshot of the website of the hotel we were staying at. Conveniently, the lovely ladies who run the guesthouse literally put on their site: "screenshot this and show it to the Tuk Tuk driver. They'll get you right here."
It was honestly the most helpful thing. The TT driver took one look at the three lines in Lao and whisked us away to our little oasis.
We arrived at our bungalow around 9:30pm. We were welcomed by two lovely Lao sisters. They showed us to our beautiful little... hut? It had everything we needed and wasn't an inch too big. It had a double-bed, a table large enough for two charging phones, a straight-backed chair, and a bathroom. The bathroom had a western toilet (We've been doing our best to avoid squat toilets. Amanda is doing better than I am in this respect, but she also hasn't been sick for the last three weeks straight.), a sink (THE BUNGALOW IS BEATING OUR APARTMENT IN THIS RESPECT), a shower, and a mirror. Really it was about as decked out as I would have wanted it to be. There was a skylight in the bathroom as well! The whole time we were there, we kept trying to turn off the bathroom light, only to find that it was already off and the skylight was lighting up the entire place!
Ok. They say a picture says 1000 words, so I'll just post some instead of describing the place any further:
At this point, my phone stopped working. Like, physically, my phone is fine. However, we've now been here for a month (I KNOW IT IS WEIRD FOR ME T
OO) and our phone plan apparently dramatically died. Not being in Thailand, we were SOL (a phrase I just taught my M3s).
We got up on Thursday morning at 5:15am.
Ok. Amanda got up at 5:15am. She woke me up at 5:28am. She really is the real MVP of this experience.
We got out of the bungalow around 5:30-40am. We then walked to the Royal Thai Embassy.
Life hack: there are no Tuk Tuks at 5:30 in the morning. Prep your walking shoes.
Ok, but honestly, the lovely Lao sisters would have totally driven us BUT THEY WERE SO NICE AND I WAS NOT ABOUT TO WAKE A SLEEPING DRAGON AT 5:30AM.
We arrived at the consulate around 6:35-45am.
We were the first people in line. Are you surprised? No? We actually were. We heard that the line was horrific and wanted to be close to the front. However, we were #1 and #2. (I was the worst and Amanda was the best - some random dude was the one with the hairy, hairy chest - which actually was accurate.)
We sat around the front until around 7:30am when a nice man from the consulate asked us to start officially queuing. At this point, people started cutting and budging. Some random dude (I'm pretty sure we went to MK Orientation together?) started SCREAMING at the people cutting.
At this point, I looked to guy #5 in line and we both looked like THOSE MINNESOTANS exchanging the words: "Dear sir, we yell silently in our head. We do not yell aloud. Get yourself together."
In the wise words of Latrice Royale:
I'm a bit torn by this picture. It should really say "get those nuts away from my face", but we shall save my love for RuPaul's Drag Race for later. (Speaking of, Amanda and I are done with S8 and we started on S1 when we moved to Nong Khai...)
Guy #5 and I continued to make eye contact.
And we continued.
It reminded me of this one time a guy came up to me and screamed "I LOVE C*CK" in my face. Alex is now one of my favorite humans in the world, so clearly these experiences work out well for me.
Guy #5 and I started casually chatting about where we were from. He was from South Africa. He pulled guy #6 into the conversation. He was also from SA. They kept breaking into Afrikaans which was very neat. But the four of us talked straight from 7:45am-9:25am. They were LOVELY.
Finally the gates opened and we got to walk in the front doors.
We queued up in front of a window and the madness began.
MediaKids did all of our paperwork and I will 100% give this to them: they did that sh*t right. The guy at the window looked at my paperwork and called my out on not doing my own paperwork. I asked him why that mattered. He didn't understand me. He then had me fill out the paperwork AGAIN to prove that it was my handwriting.
THIS IS WHY THAT LINE TAKES SO DAMN LONG. I STOOD THERE FOR FIVE MINUTES WHILE HE VERIFIED MY HANDWRITING.
Well joke was on him because in middle school I used to forge notes for my classmates based on samples of their parent's handwriting. So I've already completed this challenge. Condragulations, I was the winner of this week's challenge. I took one look at Katari's handwriting and repeated the form identically. He compared the two handwriting samples, phoned a friend from a different desk (who was literally just drinking coffee while only ONE DUDE was checking paperwork for a line of easily 400 people), looked over the handwriting samples, and then waved me through.
Amanda walked up with paperwork done by the same person.
We was immediately waved through.
I think she bribed him.
I'm kidding, but honestly I'm not above it.
After we made it through the line, our new friends from SA: Johan and Martin headed off for their resort and we went to find Hailey. She was #196. We offered to wait around for her and headed for the other side of the road where there was some shade and watermelon.
We sat on the other side of the road until Hailey was done in the line. It was well past noon.
During this time, we met a gimpy dog (leg was clearly dislocated and never relocated) who melted our hearts and we fed her treats (my breakfast from my backpack). The people watching was spectacular. We kept making up stories about the people in line. People would run through traffic from one side of the road to the other - and this was no Lanesboro side-street. This was a fully functioning, city road. And while people in Laos do drive on the correct side of the road (15/10 for Laos in THIS ONE RESPECT), they, like their Thai neighbors, drive like complete sociopaths. We watched a Dutch girl dodge traffic no less than three times running from the consulate to the photocopy stand on the other side of the street. By the third time across, she was in tears and frantically throwing money at the photocopy people. It was simultaneously sad and entertaining.
After Hailey finally got done, we took a Tuk Tuk downtown to Lin's Cafe.
We were greeted by decent Wifi, a lovely staff, excellent coffee, and a fantastic tuna sandwich. Since Laos was a French colony, it is full of baguettes, and I have no complaints about that. Well, I have complaints about European colonialism, but clearly I'm already having problems keeping this post short. I shant go into that now.
We sat and chatted for a few hours. Hailey got a blended coconut coffee and it changed my world.
After we had some food and sugar, we headed down toward the river to see what was hopping in Savannakhet. It turns out that nothing is "hopping in Savannakhet" at 3pm on a Thursday. We did find a Catholic church and a mural though. After, we split and headed back to our separate hotels for showers and naps.
On our way back, we needed to find soap and shampoo. WE FOUND A TARGET.
THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
TARGET.
Ok. So it looked like a 7/11 and a Target made a baby and the poor child got WAY more of the dominant 7/11 genes. Apparently nice things are recessive. I teach biology now, so my math puns are apparently being replaced by jokes about genetic inheritance?
It had water, shampoo, and soap. I won't complain too much about the non-Target.
We got back to our bungalow and took a much needed shower. The heat index was 49.4 degrees!
We also found this beautiful plant. 10 points to the person who can tell me what it is!
Oh and this one!
We took a quick nap (it is exhausting to be hot all the time) and then got up to meet Hailey, Johan, and Martin downtown.
We beat them there by about an hour. We had a shorter walk and we knew there was a place with mojitos. That's an easy way to get me anywhere quick.
We shared a round of mojitos with Hailey and then went to explore the small food market that had opened outside. About twenty minutes later, the boys joined us and we got food.
Amanda and I split some Pad Thai. It was delicious. She got a watermelon shake and I got an avocado shake. They were cold and refreshing. We sat outside and talked until we were all like: "booze time?"
We then migrated back to the place Amanda, Hailey, and I had just come from and had a few rounds of delicious drinks. We talked for hours and ended up shutting the place down at bar-close (which was an adorable 11pm).
The next morning we got up around 10am. We walked down to the post office to send some postcards.
We discovered that post offices in Laos do not offer post cards. We then walked to Lin's Cafe and got some coffee. Amanda again got a blended watermelon and ginger drink that was absolutely amazing. The boys and Hailey ended up messaging us around noon asking if we wanted to do lunch before picking up our Visas.
We met across the street (where Amanda and I had hung out for hours the day before) from the Visa office. We got a basil chicken and rice dish for 50B.
THEN WE DISCOVERED THAT OUR QUEUE NUMBERS FROM THE DAY BEFORE WERE GARBAGE AND MEANT NOTHING. We had to get in line in any random order we arrived in. So our beautiful >7 numbers from Thursday meant nothing on Friday. We were very far back in the line. But we were with friends and in the shade. The heat was almost balmy... the heat index was only 48 degrees!
We stood in that line for... about two hours before getting our passports (AND VISAS!) back. Johan, Martin, and Hailey then boarded a TT and headed for the bus station. They went home on Thursday night.
Amanda and I headed back to our place for another round of showers and naps. We woke up around dinnertime, waltzed back downtown. I'm getting very used to calling a 1km walk "very short".
We got coffees (Ok I got coffee and Amanda got the watermelon/ginger blended deliciousness again) and played Phase10 until food carts started popping up outside the restaurant.
The night market had the same food as the night before, but this time we went to a different booth. We got baskets full of steamed fish, mushrooms, and dumplings. It all looked very traditionally Chinese. I would stereotype it as Chinese. It was apparently very Lao... either way: it was delicious.
We walked home, passed American Horror Story: Lao Playground, and crashed.
Something about being in a foreign country and walking everywhere in the heat here makes me more exhausted than any amount of work.
We woke up bright and early on Saturday morning and checked out. We had a wonderful chat with the Lao sister who speaks more English. She had her sister drive us to the bus station for 120B (a TT would have easily been 200B simply because we speak English). We got on a bus and headed for the Lao capital: Vientiane.
At the bus station, we met a Lao woman and her daughter. She wanted to take SO many pictures with us.
There are hundreds of photos of myself, Amanda, and two Lao women on the internet. Who knows where they will end up? Certainly not us. However, Amanda captured this GEM of her trying to teach me to squat "like-ah dee Lao not sit". Needless to say, I failed with hilarity.
Onto the bus we all went.
Google maps might know how long the optimal time is, but she is a filthy liar when it comes to how long a bus is gonna take.
Girl. We got on this bus at 9:20am.
We did not arrive in the Lao capital until 8pm.
First, we got a loaf of French bread and I used my MAD Thai skills to point to some grilling chicken and say "two, please?"
And then we were on the bus for ... almost 11 hours. I got off to stretch once during a "bathroom break" (more on that later). I do not think Amanda left the bus once in this time. Hell. I don't think she stood up once. She is the MVP of this trip.
Let us start with the weirdest part of this country: people defecating EVERYWHERE.
I remember growing up and going camping and getting to pee in the woods. 9 year old me enjoyed this. ADULT 25 YEAR OLD ME HAS GROWN OUT OF THIS PHASE. Laos has not grown out of this phase.
We stopped three times along the bus ride for "bathroom breaks". We stopped in the middle of nowhere and people got off the bus, walked 2m into the underbrush, and went to the bathroom.
I will remind you that people here do not use toilet paper. So it was ... um ... gross? And this is not the only instance of random defecation we saw on this trip. A number of times in Savannakhet, we witnessed someone walk out of a building, pee on the side of the building, and walk back inside. Not once did I see a child do this. These were all grown adults.
Laos smells like garbage and we found out why.
Other odd parts of Lao bus trips: the random stops for food.
We have all been on a bus trip somewhere, right? Bus might stop at stations and if you're SUPER lucky, it'll stop somewhere good like Subway so you can get a sandwich. But you get off the bus for a sandwich.
In Laos, we would stop and the bus would immediately be swarmed by people selling their wares. They would stick their arms in open windows and walk onto the bus yelling their wares while walking the aisles. They were selling cooked eggs on sticks, bags of sticky rice, bags of sliced mangoes, sticks of mystery meats, sticks of meats I could distinguish, packs of gum (which is odd to see because it is basically illegal in Thailand), and bottles of drink. They would shove things in our laps and we had to politely say no.
Lao best friend lady pictured above bought two sticks of eggs (a total of 8 eggs), a bag of sticky rice, two mangoes, and two banana leaves filled with mystery meat.
She could describe none of the food to us, but generously offered it to us saying: "try our Lao food... numnum eat numnum".
The rice and eggs were actually very good. They were plain. The eggs had been cooked in a way where there was no yolk. They looked like there were holes (almost like tiny Swiss cheese holes) through all the eggs. They were charred and covered in a thin layer of ash where the shells had been broken and it actually added something nice to the flavor. The sticky rice tasted... like completely bland, unseasoned rice. Gordon Ramsey would be ashamed. I've eaten a lot of good food. This was just... boring. But I will repeat: it wasn't bad. And the best part was getting to share it with a lady who was genuinely enthusiastic about sharing her culture with two weridos from America.
We FINALLY arrived in the Lao capital (which I cannot spell nor say, please don't ask me to) and the panic fully set in. We did not know what time the boarder was closing, we were at a bus station nowhere near the friendship bridge, we had NO phone signal because we were still both without working phones, and we speak 0 Lao.
We tried to find a bus going from the station to Thailand. No luck. That bus line was done for the day. Tuk Tuk it was.
We found a man who offered to take us to the border for "I take you for 150".
At that price, we couldn't argue. We hopped in his car, prayed we weren't going to be murdered, and took off.
We arrived at immigration twenty minutes later and we handed him a 500B bill, expecting change.
He then said: "No Baht. Kip."
Ah. He did not want 150B. He wanted 150,000 Kip. (150.000K is how they would write it). This comes out to be 600B or about 19USD.
He did not want my baht. I didn't care. I was, quite frankly, done being pleasant by this point. I was tired, sick of sitting, and wanted to be home. I handed him 600B, told him to buy himself something nice, and exited the car.
We then walked through Lao immigration, paid 8.000K (which is 8,000K, but Lao people apparently hate commas?), got on a bus, and headed over the MeKong river back to Thailand.
We arrived at Thai immigration, filled out arrival cards, got to the front of the desk, and the man at the booth informed us that nobody had stamped us out of Laos yet.
It was 8:45pm. Immigration closed in both countries at 9:30pm and we now had to go back to Laos.
We ran across the street (again, Amanda runs now), and literally jumped into a bus heading toward Laos. A man tried to grab me and asked for 40B each to take the bus.
I shot him a look that could kill someone and said: "absolutely not". The bus was already moving and he lost his hold on me. We pulled out of the station and I felt slightly rebellious.
We got back to Laos. We received MANY funny looks when we walked to the 'departures' gate and not 'arrivals'. However, NOBODY corrects ANYONE here... so I'm not super surprised. We then departed Laos officially. (Also, if you lose your departure card, it is a 1500B fine. We didn't. But if we had... woof.)
We then paid another 8.000K for two more bus tickets and sat down in the waiting area. A man came up to us and said: "I take you taxi. Bus not for hour. Immigration closed."
I thought this one through. The shuttle bus wouldn't stop before immigration closed. Why would it run again in an hour? It was 9pm by this point. Surely there would be one more bus before immigration closed? The man at the window wouldn't have sold us bus tickets if there wasn't another bus, right?
Then my brain clicked into overdrive: he was trying to scare us for an extra buck.
I told him to buzz off.
Not 45 seconds later, the shuttle bus was back.
I flipped him off and boarded the bus like a queen. At this point, the sassy Genie had left her bottle. He had not rubbed me the right way.
We got back to Thai immigration and walked up to our immigration friend again. He greeted us with smiles and: "you get Lao exit stamp? All good? Ready to get to Bangkok?"
We looked at him confused and he said: "Vacation in Bangkok?"
We responded that we were teachers at PTK and he was VERY impressed. Apparently PTK is the best school in Nong Khai. I was unaware of this. He looked at my passport and said: "Minnesota? I know Minnesota! I was there last year!"
The man working at Thai Immigration (a Nong Khai native) has a first cousin who works for Thai Immigration at MSP! His cousin lives in Bloomington and he went to visit him last fall!
The whole time Amanda and I were processing through immigration we bonded with our new bestie about his experience in Minnesota and our experience in Nong Khai. We joked and hummed a few bars from "It's A Small World".
After this, we found a Tuk Tuk home. We arrived home, safe, sound, and worn down at 10:20pm.
It was one heck of a day, but we made it. We are officially back on official teaching Visas!
