Welcome To Laos

Visitors to Thailand receive a visa on arrival which permits staying in the kingdom for a limited time, after the expiration of which they become eligible for a range of unpleasant consequences from a stiff daily fine up through permanent blacklisting from the country. Foreigners with expired visas are subject to immediate arrest and possible deportment. So in other words, you don't want your visa to expire. And how do you get a new visa? You simply head for the nearest border, cross into a neighboring country, and then turn around and re-enter Thailand, a maneuver known as the visa run.

Regular readers of my essays may recall my hapless attempt to do a Cambodian visa run: a fun-filled day which included getting detained by border security and the forced payment of a bribe to corrupt police, followed by a terrifying motorcycle tour as passenger/hostage with those same police. So this time I decided to do my visa run in gentle Laos, a country which is often described as "the way Thailand was 30 years ago."

I was set to attend the wedding of a friend an hour outside Nakhon Phanom city in a small rice farming village close to the Laotian border. The timing was perfect for my visa expiration and a new bridge had recently opened connecting Thailand to Laos across the Mekong River. The logistical chain seemed to be a tight one containing few contingencies, and I felt confident that the process could be completed smoothly and in time for the wedding the following day. 

I arrived at Nakhon Phanom in the morning and took an amusingly noisy tuk-tuk (three wheeled taxi) to the bus station. From there I bought an international bus ticket to an unpronounceably named city over the border and settled in for the ride over the bridge and into Laos. It was me, an unaccompanied child with at least two live chickens in a bag, and a few old women with mountains of plastic goods in filthy plastic bags. I was feeling very much in my element, an intrepid explorer finding my way among the natives. With a self satisfied smile, I soon was lulled by the heat and the thrumming of the ancient diesel engine into sleep, although it could just have easily been a euphoric state brought about by exhaust fumes which filled the interior of the bus with an oily blue haze. 

We arrived at the Thai border with a jolt and I groggily stumbled down to the checkpoint, stamped out and got back on the bus. Within a few minutes we were across the bridge and in Laos, where once again I disembarked and approached the border station. Accompanied by the steady rumble of my bus as it idled behind me, I stood at the visa window and filled out my application. The form called for a photograph, a requirement reinforced by a handwritten sign whose emphatic use of the triple negative made its intent crystal clear: "No visa not with photo no can make!!" Maybe it was the residual salubrious effect of the bus fumes, but it was with an unconcerned air that I casually handed over my visa application with neither a photo nor a bribe. The agent breezily waved away this omission with a smile and a "Mai pen rai" (It's nothing.) 

Stamp, stamp, scribble, scribble and the deal was done. The Laotian visa successfully acquired, I presented myself at the border crossing which consisted of an elaborately uniformed border guard dozing in a stifling hut. His rows of ribbons and medals would have qualified him for the Medal of Honor back in the states. Being well aware of the threat of the hazy menace potentially lurking beneath his peaked cap, I was loathe to disturb his tropical stupor and merely waited patiently until he opened one reptilian eye and reluctantly acknowledged my presence. 

The requisite frown in place, he leafed through the pages of my passport, looking up periodically to inspect the placidly smiling foreigner passing into his country with no luggage. "You go home Thailand?" he demanded in simple Thai. I pointed back across the broad river and answered "Yes, visa." He nodded knowingly and studied me for another few moments. 

The satisfying thump of my passport being stamped seemed oddly loud, and it was at that moment I realized that the sound of the throbbing diesel engine of my bus which had provided the sonic backdrop to the proceedings had disappeared, and I was alone in the silence and the heat of the border station. 

The guard snapped my passport shut and handed it back to me with a smile. "Welcome to Laos."

Tuk-tuk to bus station: $.70
Bus to Laos: $2.30
Laotian border fee: $29.00
Thai Visa: Priceless