Day 2 - Constantly Travelling

After a couple of hours of sleep, I woke up with Jackie still using my thigh as a pillow. I tried to surreptitiously get up to go to the toilet and in the process accidentally dropped my iPad on Jackie’s head. She didn’t make a fuss………much. A glass of red wine to soothe the pain seemed to do the trick!

We landed in Bangkok at 3.30pm local time following a fairly painless 10 and a half hour flight. We then had a several hours to kill before catching our connecting Thai Airways flight to Laos.

At 6.30pm, we took off on a full A320 aircraft for the short 55 minute flight to Vientiane. Incredibly, the super efficient airline crew managed to serve everyone a meal followed by coffee. The meal consisted of a purple (Thai Airways) coloured wrap containing bbq chicken and honey mustard dressing followed by a carrot cheesecake.

As we were coming into land there were a series of crew tannoy announcements and I heard (or thought I heard) that it was illegal to bring pork products into Laos…….it might’ve been just from certain surrounding countries like Vietnam, China, Cambodia etc. We weren’t taking any chances and tried to force down 4 now slightly warm mini pork pies that Jackie still had in her bag. I managed two, Jackie ate one and the remaining one was stuffed into the seat pocket.

Upon arrival at Wattay International Airport, we filled out a lengthy Arrivals form, then went to the Visa desk, where we were given a visa form to complete which required exactly the same information as the Arrival forms.

Eventually, we were ready and handed over both forms, our passports, 4 x crisp (as requested) 20 US dollar notes and an additional passport photo each. We were asked several questions about our trip and then told to go to the adjoining desk, where a lady counted out the US dollars notes we had handed over. We were given our passports, photos and the Arrivals form back and told to go to the immigration desk, where we handed everything over again. After a few more minutes, our passports were handed back to us and annoyingly our passport photos which apparently they didn’t want.

I mention the passport photos, because all the official travel information told us we needed them for our visas and we had both spent £10 at a Photo Booth to get them. I wouldn’t have minded so much, but Jackie thought my photo looked like a Brinks Mat robber……she was meaning Kenneth Noye.

Unsurprisingly, after this carry on lasting about an hour, our rucksacks were waiting for us in baggage reclaim and we walked through a now empty customs hall. We needn’t have swallowed the pork pie evidence after all.

At the taxi desk, we paid $7 US dollars and a taxi took us the 3 miles to our hotel, Chandara Boutique Hotel arriving at 9pm. We dumped our luggage in our room, cleaned our teeth, changed into shorts and went straight out in search of a beer.

We found a BBQ/Grill place just 200 metres away that seemed quite lively (it was the last night of Chinese New Year). We sat down and order 2 large BeerLao. The young waiter then just stood there smiling as we leafed through the menu book, despite several attempts by us to encourage him to get our beers. Jackie also tried to enquire whether we could pay in either Thai Baht or US dollars, but this just prompted more grins from the waiter.

Eventually another waiter came to our rescue and we learnt that the menu book was a waste of time, because only the meats on the front page for barbecuing at our table were available. We didn’t fancy it so we declined and instead just supped 4 large beers over the next hour or so.

When we ordered the bill we were informed that it was buy 3 beers get 2 beers free, so they brought out a fifth beer for us to take away. Our bill was just $6 US dollars. An absolute bargain.

We returned to our hotel for a much needed shower then sat on the balcony with our free beer in the warm night air.

Hopefully tomorrow we will actually do something other than be constantly travelling.

Song of the Day - Travellers Tune by Ocean Colour Scene.Läs mer