Crossing the Mekong to Laos

First of all, you get past the customs office in Thailand. Sandra had miscalculated and had to pay up. One day overstay (she's starting to make a habit out of it. Twice already did she overstay in Burma. It is less costly over there though...). Anyways, we did get into this canoe with motor together with an english couple we had met on the bus the day before. Getting in and out of that canoe took more time then the actual crossing of the Mekong...

On the other side of course more of the customs-routine. And then we were all targetted for the boat trip. We hadn't bought tickets yet and i think we were all glad we hadn't... that boat (a long boat, hard seats and virtually no space) was going to be packed. There were so many people heading for that boat. All westerners! That was the last thing i wanted to do. Being packed up for 2 days (and an overnight stay in a village along the way) with way over 40 westerners in a boat that can seat 40 or so. We butted out. Did some shopping around but found that everybody told us different sories according to what they had to sell themselves. We got so tired of it that we decided to leave the place anyway even though that ment hiring a minibus instead of staying one night and taking the normal bus the next morning (that bus leaves before anybody basically has a chance to get to the other side, the custom officials don't want to open up before 8 in the morning and the bus leaves at 8.30....So you're obliged to stay one night).

One of the more interesting things we saw that day. Snake wine/whiskey/whatever. Even one that had the tail of a scorpion in it's mouth.




Along the way we gave a ride to 3 thai. They were on a weekend trip with their american employers (or something of the sort). They had hired 2 pick-ups for the journey but according to them one of those cars had problems from the beginning and nobody was allowed to sit in that one. When we pulled up they asked us if we could take some people to the next village. Sure, no problem. Well, it became a problem since villages came and went. We even all stopped at one place for lunch and they got back in the car with us. At some point Sandra decided to ask. Turned out that they were coming all the way with us. That of course pissed us of quite a bit. Ok ,we are farang (westerners) but we don't like being taken advantage off.. So we said they could come with us if we got some money for the car. After all we had hired the damn thing and suddenly it became a lot more crowded (i even got stuffed back in the bag for goodness sakes...) . The guy that had hired out the pick-ups even tried to negotiate with us. The nerve. We all felt a bit pissed off. They had lied to us. It was obvious that they had banked on us not saying anything and taking advantage. Well. they got the wrong people. But it did leave a bad taste in our mouths for a while. And after that we didn't enirely trusted the driver anymore either. After all, we all had a sneaking suspicion that he and the other guy had arranged it along the way...