Goodbye Thailand, Hello Laos

Heading back to Bangkok after our amazing time in Myanmar weirdly felt like going home. As our third visit to the city it felt reassuringly familiar, and we stayed a night before heading to the train station to take our second sleeper of the trip so far. We were heading for Nong Khai, a small town close to Laos and from where you can catch a train across the Friendship Bridge to complete the border crossing.

One of the more notable parts of this journey was in fact the relaxed attitude the authorities seemed to have to the border in general. We walked up to the empty booth of Thai immigration to get our exit stamps when an official appeared looking rather amused. He was saying something to another guard in Thai before leaving the booth with his phone in hand. Rather bizarrely he then proceeded to take some photos of us both before going back in the booth and processing our passports normally. The other guard also took the opportunity to take some phone pictures of us having our passports sorted. We’ve gotten used to having photo requests from people on our travels, which we can only assume is because we are actually unusually tall in this part of the world (even I’m often a whole head above most of the men) but this is usually in more rural areas where people who look like us are less common, not at immigration when there are at least 3 other tall white people in the same queue (perhaps we just have funny faces). The border on the Lao side was pretty straightforward, even if we were being rushed by the border officers to complete the visa form (they didn’t seem to care if we’d actually filled any of it in!). A short taxi ride later we arrived at our hotel desperate for a coffee and some breakfast and looking forward to Tom’s arrival.