2-Day Mekong River Cruise

I’ve lately managed to wake up just before my alarm. Today that was at 4:27 am.

At 5 am, I was ready to be picked up by a van to be driven to the Thai border from Chiang Rai, the Fourth Lao/Thai Bridge of Friendship.

I confidently diagnosed our driver with a vibrant mix of some top-shelf ADHD, withdrawal from whatever – but it must have been some dependency – and something I call “Restless limb and head syndrome”; maybe some OCD as well.

The driver had two phones. One for navigation, one for music – mainly. Both phones were supposed to stay attached to their designated phone holders.

That’s exactly where they didn’t spend a whole lot of time, since the driver couldn‘t keep his hands off them. He constantly touched them to check the weather, updates, his schedule, the music, the navigation, to take phone calls, and many other things.

When he didn’t do that, he adjusted the AC, the windows, his face – everything you could possibly think to do in a car.

I’m truly surprised we all arrived at the border after 2 hours in one piece, since he had zero focus on the road.

Once at the border, we waited. And waited. And waited. What did we wait for? No one ever told me.

Eventually, we made our way through the immigration point in Thailand, which was a fairly quick matter.

Then we waited again. One hour went by at that place…

While we were waiting, we were passing the time by filling out our visa on arrival documents for Laos – I could think of more fun things to do.

Unless you’re a lucky duck from Switzerland, you have to come prepared with: a passport, naturally; 40 US dollars in crisp notes – and they mean crisp! (and they need to be at least from 2019); two passport photos (they only wanted one but said to bring two); plus, of course, the visa form and the arrival form.

Then we were allowed to board a bus that would bring us to the Laos border – and wow. That bus was gross! It smelled mouldy and every single seat on that bus was deeply stained – and was likely mouldy as well. The smell had to come from somewhere.

An active AC ensured that the spunky spores were merrily milled around and nested in your nose with ferocious fervour.

I felt rather sick.

At the Laos border, step by step, our group of 20+ people handed in all their documents. Luckily, everything went smoothly.

Another 15-minute drive in the van to the Mekong River – where we all boarded a boat for a 2-day river cruise.Read more