Day 90 - 1 Kilo of bananas and 3 rats please

Vietnam - Laos border procedure (see map below) :

Step 1) Show passport at 1 - they check/flick through. Signal you to continue.

Step 2) Show passport at 2 - they check/flick through. Send you to a different building.

Step 3) Go to the building front entrance, get shooed around to the side

Step 4) show passport at 3 - wait until we understand that he's waiting for a bribe before proceeding. We explain that we have no cash left, only the equivalent of ~10 cents. A local sees what's going on, and instantly (but very discreetly) hands us some money that we can give to the guard...interesting. We get a Vietnam leaving stamp.

Step 5) Show passport at 4 - he looks at new stamp.

Step 6) Wait at visa (at point 5) gate till 7:45am for the gate to open at 7am 🤣, fill out the visa form (as rapidly as possible to not get stuck behind the 10 people...and feeling like we're copying each others test answers) and hand it over with passport. Pay the visa money and get a visa + stamp . Quite an efficient step.

Step 7) Go to 6, hand over half the visa form, Obviously show passport.

Step 8) Go back to 5 - unknown reason. Same guy we saw 10 mins ago. Show passport, and visa he just gave us.

Step 9) Go back to 6 - same guy we saw in step 7. get a stamp on the visa. Get told we're good to go.

Step 10) show passport at 7 on the way out of the complex.

No less than 2 hours later, we're in Laos! 9 shows of the passports, 7 different booths and each booth having 1-2 people...that's a ~10 person job. Hats off to the guys in the airport who single handedly do the job of 10 people in about 2 minutes. 🙊

First stop over the border, buns for now and the pocket, and learn about the 44 character Laos alphabet.

Interestingly, from immediately over the border, you could see the difference with Vietnam :

• Almost every house is on stilts
• Huge dead rats hung up on the side of the road for sale (coincidence with the houses on stilts?)
• Frogs on the menu (and in bags in people's hands walking down the road...I assume not being taken home to be kept as pets)
• Motorbikes no longer with trailers, but big wide platforms
• Live chickens being carried upside down on moped
• Bananas ripening everywhere
• Stonking tail wind

Knowing that we've got another potentially super faffy border crossing into Thailand the next day, we decide it's a good idea to try get to the next border town...and it would be fun to cross the whole country in one day!

So we get our heads down, buy a few weird and wonderful snacks (birds nest juice anyone??? 🤢 - should have read the label!) and we teleport ourself to the next border town 240km up the same road.

We made it without too much time in the dark and a very satisfying track which started on one border line...and finished on the next!

Food spend today: 42.82 euros Tea consumption: 6