Friend's trip to Bangkok-Nongkhai-Vientian Part 1

I have received this mail from a friend of mine. She is a Thailander and used to be alip's and my colleague.. She is now working and living in Thailand. If you guys remember the word 'salamapaki'...dia lah ni.. She told me that she spent only RM600 for this trip.. Jom lah cuti-cuti Malaysia..

I have been to Vang Vieng & Luangprabang in Laos last week with one of my best freind 'Moo'.

The place is wonderful, the food is fantastic and the people is so generous and freindly. We enjoyed and liked it so much except sitting on the bus for more than 20 hrs driving on the mountain road!! can you imagine how hard it is! We took the air-conditioner bus from Suvarnabhumi Airport to Nong-khai.

You can travel by bus from Suvarnabhumi airport to many provinces in Thailand...most of them going to the East.You can check out from this site http://www.transport.co.th/bussuwanapoom_3.asp

After got off from the bus, there're a lot of people at Nongkhai bus terminal that they were waiting for buying the ticket from Nongkhai to Vientian at 7.30. However, there's a line of 50 more people waiting to get on the bus. I was so sure that we never ever get on the bus even sitting on the roof. Can you imagine that!...So what should we do. Suddenly, my beautiful gf use her charm when i was running to find the ticket for going back to Bangkok it's working this time ...thanks Moo I owe you one ;) we met another 7 people who are going to Vang Vieng and stay on the same guesthouse!!! 'This is the destiny'...Moo told me.But I told Moo that 'No, it's a pity of them when they met us, but too late'...555 So we joined them from NongKhai-Vientiane-Vang Vieng trip. They are all Thais, nice people, funny to talk to.

We hired the skylab to send us at the immigation border with our luggages...40 Baht per person they charged. We don't know much about the charging priceBut I think is fair enough cos it took about 15 minute to get there...not so much choices at that time so we jumped on it. About 15 minute for immigration process, we submitted our passport with immigration form. Everything went well, no problem at all...good! We paid another 20 baht for bus ticket to cross the Thai-Laos Friendship bridge and 10 Baht for stepping on Laos land...Yeah, we have to...after passed all the process at the immigration area, we were looking for something to bring us to our destination...Just 7.5 steps from the immigration area. A lot of guys attacking me with this question 'ja pai nai' ...I was looking at them and said that I am thinking...I don't know where to go!!! hahaano it's not...I would like to check the price first. So we end up at 300 Baht for each person (we got 9 persons on the van excluding the driver).

In Laos they drive on the right side, so I had to adjust my feeling a little bit...not get used to it you know. Then they took us to exchange the money. The currency on 23rd of Oct was 1 THB = 245 kiep. We changed 2,000 baht , so how much in kiep...think! think! think! yeah math and me never get along well together, but i tried...hehee ...we had 490,000 kiep with us. The kiep currency is stronger than Thai Baht, so this trip is a bit expensive. Anyway,I became a millionaire in 5 mins..hahaha.. never had this much cash before in my life. After exchanged the money then we went to Talad Sao Mall (morning market) for breakfast. We thought that it's fresh market with more local food, but it's shopping mall that having food center on the 5th floor..feel a bit disappointed. We finished the breakfast around 10 AM then we went to Phra Thad Luang and head on to Vang Vieng....There're 130 km to go, but 4 hrs...

To be continued...