Looking out of the guest house first thing in the morning…we had cow visitors on the other side of the road

We got up early, packed all our things in a way that would let us get to passports and carnet easily at the border and went off in search for breakfast. The same restaurant where we’ve had lunch yesterday was open so we had more baguette and muesli. 🙂 The other two tables were filled with employees of an NGO and their kids who talked to us about motorcycle travels and the like. In the end, they were even able to give us direction to a printing place so we could print something off that we needed for the Iranian visa.

Having done that, we made sure to have exactly the right amount of US dollars before heading north. From Stung Treng, it is another 60km to the border. The Lonely Planet warns that it is in the middle of nowhere but we hadn’t expected that much nowhere to be honest. First of all, it was the worst road we have been on in Cambodia. Big chunks of it are missing, at stretches the seal has created mountains in the middle of the road and there was literally NOTHING around so we even stopped and checked if this was really the road or if we had taken a wrong turn without noticing. Nope, this was the road. Leading to the only border crossing between Cambodia and Laos.

Weird tarmac and mud mountains in the middle of the road

Even though it took us way longer than expected, we still made it to the border before any of the tourist busses. This makes the border much less busy and, apparently, also a bit less corrupt.

Leaving Cambodia was a bit odd as the border official took our passports, then asked for the export papers for the bike and when we said we still needed to get this fixed was reluctant to give our passports back to us. So there was a bit of confusion on our side, the official asked for 2 dollars “stamp fee” which confused us even more because hadn’t he just said we needed to sort the bike out first? It somehow ended with us getting our passports stamped, NOT paying the “stamp fee”, getting our passports back and Flo leaving for the customs office. I stayed with the bike just in case. However, Flo came back reasonably quickly with an export stamp in our carnet, even though when we entered Cambodia, no one had bothered to give us an import stamp. We are not quite sure what to make of it but it will be fine as the export stamp is the important one. Obviously, this stamp in the carnet was all the border official wanted to see as we were allowed to pass to the Laotian side afterwards.

Ah, there we are. Time to pack away the camera and get out the paperwork

The Laotian side of the border looks really efficient: You have three adjacent windows, clearly marked with “Visa on Arrival”, “Arrival” and “Vehicle Import”. Everything we needed in a neat row. So we started with filling out the visa on arrival form, the arrival card and the departure card. We handed it in, paid our US$30 for the visa and then needed to hand over another US$1 per person as some kind of “processing fee”. Oh well. It took a while for our visas to be processed so Flo dealt with the import in the meantime. No problems here, just an import stamp in our carnet.

Then, our passports were ready for collection. The visa was in it but in order to get the arrival date stamped in, another US$2 per person was demanded. And here was no getting around it; the Lao people had their extra fees firmly in place. So in the end, we paid 10% more for our visa than we actually should have. Is that still a success? I don’t know.

From the viewing platform downstream

Successfully in Laos now, we started towards Don Khong, an island in the Mekong, where we had booked our night’s accommodation. It was still before lunch time though so when we passed a sign for a waterfall in the Mekong, Flo wanted to check it out.

A little drama about the price later (we actually got on the bike, left and came back), we paid the over-priced foreigner’s entrance fee to see the waterfall. Flo was very grumpy even though he had made the call to pay because he really wanted to see it and was mocked by me for a while but soon, we were fine again. The falls were really pretty. You start with a view of the river on top and then see the rapids were it drops before being shuttled to the low end to see the falls from the bottom. There was even a little walkway to rocks so you could get closer to the water than the platform would allow you. The falls are not high but the Mekong is a mighty river and the water fell on its entire width. Quite spectacular.

Our goal on the west bank of this arm of the Mekong.

From here, we rode to Don Khong or rather to the place where we expected the vehicle ferry to shuttle us across. However, instead of a ferry, we found a new bridge just leading across the side section of the Mekong onto the island itself. This crossing was thus much easier than we had expected. Don Khong is quite sleepy with a stretch of guest houses and restaurants on the river side. Our guest house turned out to be lovely with a big room on the first floor with a balcony and river views. It was so quiet and relaxing that Flo and I didn’t want to do more than sit and watch the river before taking an afternoon stroll along the riverfront. The Mekong itself is so calm and smooth here; you get no indication that the falls are not even that far away. Instead, tiny fishing boats swarm the water surface at dusk before everything settles down for the night.