Border Crossing on Bicycle (12th March 07)

Nong Khai to Vientiane
Distance - 35km
Average - 19.1km/h

Originally we planned to spend a few days cruising around the Thai side of the Mekong river, visiting some sleepy fishing villages and seeing a more slower paced Thailand. Yet we were also itching to get across to Laos and so made the decision to head across a few days earlier.

The Thai-Lao friendship bridge is only a few km long, yet it is only the 2nd bridge to span the entire width of the Mekong - the 1st is in China.

We rode a few km's out of town to reach the Thai immigration point. It was all very exciting doing this on bicycle, and it was far easier than we were expecting. Once crossed into the Laos side as we pre-organised our visa in Khon Kaen, we had no queues or delays. The people from the buses in comparison, we put in queues with an hour wait. So all the formalities took us less than 15 mins and we were on our way to the capital of Laos - Vientiane.

Vientiane was about a 20km ride from the border crossing. As soon as you cross over you can see the different between Thailand and Laos. Simple things such as road signs were missing on the Laos side, so we had to go by our compass to make sure we were heading in the right direction.

Laos (so far) is also more developed than we were expecting. I guess I had images of Cambodia as what to expect of Laos, but I was completly wrong. Maybe outside of the capital will be a different story.

Vietiane is the least stressful capital that we have ever been to. Comparing it to neighbouring Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur, it seems almost like a small town. It will be interesting to head further north, into the real small towns of Laos to see what differences there are.

We met some really friendly like-minded travellers at our guesthouse. Had a nice dinner with them down at the water-front looking out over the Thai side. It seems like the people who travel in Laos have much larger time schedules and usually encorporate it as part of a large trip in South East Asia. That alone is very different to Vietnam, where many travellers went solely to Vietnam with tight time restraints or part of a packaged tour.

We plan 2 days to explore the capital before heading on our way north.