Hello! Sabaidee! - Day 3 - Hello Sawasdee Khrab!
- art58koen
- Apr 6
- 2 min read
I got up shortly before sunrise and walked along the riverside by myself.
At that time of the day, not much was happening, resulting in a quiet and uneventful stroll.
Leaving the river I ventured into town, checking out some more heritage buildings.
Unlike Luang Prabang where at this time you are being swamped by monks on their alms rounds, here in Thakhek things were different, it took some time to encounter a few orange-robed guys.
Back at the Mekong Hotel, I gave the two Ancient Ones a wake-up call, and once they finally looked more or less respectable we set off for a baguette restaurant!
While enjoying our breakfast we couldn’t help noticing a large number of local cyclists parking nearby for some event.
We paid them a visit and learned that this was a regular meeting where they set off for a ride together.
Despite their fancy outfits and good-quality bicycles, they were not hard-core bikers but just enjoyed meeting friends and cruising through town together.
Back at the hotel we packed our stuff and checked out, next destination was Thakhek International Bus Station.
A 4.7 km ride through town brought us to the station, a quite large place with lots of shops and food places, but not many buses.
Despite that, the information we’d received yesterday turned out to be correct, and buying bus tickets was a piece of cake.
Even so, we were advised to contact the driver and discuss additional costs for our bikes with him
This turned out too to be relatively easy and an hour later we (plus a load of other passengers) were on the way to Lao Immigration, just before the Friendship Bridge.
Clearing customs wasn’t complicated and a little later everybody was back on the bus for the ride across the bridge to Thai Immigration.
That part took considerably more time partly due to the other passengers, more questions were asked and photos taken.
But in the end, everybody was allowed to get back on the bus and continue to Nakhon Phanom’s bus station.
We unloaded our bikes and set off for That Phanom, welcome back to Thailand!
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