The journey to the Laos border started at 7am (the sun was still rising hence the picture) where we all had pancakes made by the owner of the guest house. We then filled out our visa forms and got in a tuk tuk on the way to the boarder. The journey was about 10 minutes and I was expecting it to be a shack with an official in but it was a very modern boarder crossing with official booths. First we had to depart Thailand so we queued to get our passports stamped, some people were pushing in so I sent them to the back of the queue (no one queues here!) and then jumped on the shuttle bus which took us across the river to Laos. We were told by our guide that we got up early to avoid the queues, the border opened at 8 so we were on the second bus across. Because Bun, our guide, was a Laos citizen he didn't have to queue with the rest of us. He first took our passports as he said he could submit them as a group only to find out that he couldn't so we were all sent to join the back of the queue! As we shuffled along to the front of the queue we realised you submitted your application and then had to join another 'queue' to pay and pick up your visa. So we finally made it to the front of the queue and realise bun had given us the only one form and there was a second form required. We were told to join the back of the queue. By this time another bus had arrived so the queue was so long. We decided not to do this so filled our form out and just handed it back, it wasn't even looked at! So we then had to join the second queue and at this point I was getting a little frustrated. The Laos border officials have no system in place. The queue wasn't a queue people were just pushing in all over the place, I soon sorted that haha and then the passports are just randomly given back. They look at the photo and name and just shout the individual forward, it isn't first come first served so in total we were there a good couple of hours. I did think a couple of times if I worked there for a day I would sort their processes out, but that was my HR head on there. Then bun was called into an immigration room as they thought he wasn't a Laos resident so the boarder crossing seemed to take ages!
We all needed to exchange money as we didn't have any if the Laos currency which is kip. Kip is a large currency so exchanging £20 I got about 400,000 kip back so confusing!
We then loaded our bags on the roof of a tuk tuk and into Laos we went. I had managed to successfully enter my second country in Asia. Yay!