Get up at 6:40. Go with Mike to his office. Go to airport. Plane delayed one hour.
Receive phone call from colleague informing us that CNN says there’s a tropical storm coming into Northern Laos from Vietnam today.
Fly to Vientiane. Go straight to get visa photos taken. Stare at many pictures of beautiful women while photos are processing. Discuss what constitutes “provocative” with Mike.
No time for lunch.
Get in car. Drive to national office. Get out of car. Pick up necessary visa forms from national office and discuss case of little orphan girl with relevant staff for five minutes. Get in car. Drive to the border. Get out of car. Get in line to leave Laos. Get in car. Drive across the bridge into Thailand. Get out of car. Mistakenly get into line to leave Thailand before we have officially entered. Get in correct line to enter Thailand. Fill out forms. Get hungry. Get in line to leave Thailand again. Get in car. Drive back to Laos border. Get out of car. Get in line to enter Laos again. Fill in forms. Get hungrier. Get business visa. Get in car. Head straight to airport in the rain. Drive across double yellow lines and raised median strip because running late. Get to airport 49 minutes before flight scheduled to leave. Get out of car.
Flight delayed by one hour. Sit on small plastic seat in departure lounge and eat ice cream cone and seaweed flavored crackers. Do not feel that this hits the spot, exactly. Hope we get back to Luang Prabang before the storm does.
Think I should probably write blog post. Come up with this. Sigh. Figure it will just have to do.
15 comments
ha ha ha!! I did this between Singapore and Malaysia last week!! Incidentally, I’m hoping to see Luang Prabang within the next few months…..how weird!
border control in SE Asia is a trip and a half on its own. Love your telling of it. 🙂
You will love Luang Prabang I do believe! I have some restaurant recs for you before your trip, too.
ooo, excellent, the restaurant pictures you post always look so relaxing and atmospheric!
Forgive my ignorance, but why do you have to cross the border?
Yes, well… that’s a good question. One I was asking myself in the car in no mans land between the two countries yesterday. I don’t have a good answer either – it’s just the system… you get approval for the visa but the visa itself is issued at a border. Hence you have to go to a class A border post. It used to be the same way with my US visa – I had some awful experiences with US customs at the Mexico border.
Ah, I see… thanks for the explanation!
Um . . . I know this is sooo not the point but seaweed flavored crackers? really? Of all the flavors in the world that’s what someone picked to sell en masse? Well, at least there was ice cream. I hope you are home and safe and cozy now.
Home. Safe. Cozy. AC on. It’s raining. Yay. I know, about the seaweed crackers. But, by then, even they tasted good.
This is great, i’ve done it before, just opposite you. From Thailand, to Laos (same border) and back into Thailand. Good fun. I now wish I had stayed in Laos for more than 15 minutes! did you make it back before rain? and, more importantly, did you get proper food?
We did not make it back before all the rain, but we did make it back before any heavy rain, which is great. And we went straight from the airport to get some proper food at 7:30pm, by which time we were both famished and glassy. But dinner tasted great! Yeah, I wished we could have stayed longer than 10 minutes too, but “time was short” as Mike put it, delicately, to the driver. PS Hope you guys are going great!!
I love it when you talk about you and your husband’s date nights and stuff. It is so much fun to read. Do you have a cool Australian accent? It’s one of my favorite accents. When you met your husband did you think of him as the one with the accent? If so is it still that way? I have a bit of an obsession/fascination with accents. It’s strange. 🙂 Your motorcycle story were the police pulled you over was hillarious. You’re an excellent writer. I love your book My Hands Came Away Red. Thank you for writing.
Felicia, thanks for visiting the blog! Yes, I have an Australian accent, but I’m not sure it’s that strong anymore. My Australian friends tell me I sound like an American because I’ve lived in America for so many years. So Mike’s American accent didn’t sound strange to me really, because I was so used to it.
I’m glad you enjoy reading pieces like date night, they’re a lot of fun to write. They make me laugh, so it’s good to know they make other people laugh as well.
Thanks again for reading.
Well…at least you all have successfully gotten Mike his visa. Now to get yours…
For which country, Laos, or America? I do have a visa now for Laos thanks to Mike. I’m on his work visa as a dependent – which, as we found out this morning, is NOT enough status to be listed as a signatory on our bank account… only mike has enough status for that privilege at this stage. So the saga continues.
[…] was talking about beauty and what comprises provocative with Mike last week in Vientiane while we were sitting on hard plastic chairs waiting for our passport photos to be processed. […]
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