Crossing into Laos from China, and visas on arrival

We just crossed into Laos from China a couple of days ago. Before we went we tried to read up and ask around a lot, but got some pretty contradictory information, so I just thought I'd give people thinking of travelling this route some pointers.

First off, on the Chinese side Mengla was an OK town to base ourselves for the night, plenty of cheap accommodation around and a handful of cheap restaurants if you can read Chinese menus :) . If you're coming from the north, you'll most likely arrive at the long distance bus station. There are frequent 15Y busses from about 7.20am to the border town of Mohan from the local bus station, to find it turn left out of the long distance station, dodge the touts who quoted us extortionate prices, and walk about a mile, keeping an eye out for an opening on the left with a load of minibusses parked in it which is the one you're after. The hotel nearby mentioned in the book might be closed, one way or other none of the locals could direct us there.

Mohan itself might be the best place to stay if you want to get over the border early, for example if you're aiming for a first night in Luang Prabang, it seemed a nice little place with several good restaurants and smiling helpful people. We were surrounded by loads of women offering us reasonable rates on RMB-US$ or Lao Kip (1200K-1RMB), but as the first one half-heartedly tried her luck at short-changing me I decided to change the rest of my money in Laos. There may be a bank in Boten but I didn't see it, and all the others were shut until we got to Luang Prabang 24 hours later, by which time our Kip and $s were running short. I'd recommend changing money on the street in Mohan, just make sure you count what you get back.

Crossing out of China was as easy as ever, and the Lao post is a short 3Y ride away. When you get there, there's a window saying 'visa on arrival' and we also had the luxury of a smiling chatty fluent English speaker. We put 30 days down on our application form, checked this was OK, he said no problem, took our 315Y each (much cheaper in Dollars at $35) and sent us off to the check-in window, where we fought our way past the contents of the Chinese tour-bus that had just rolled up and got our stamps. There was some discussion amongst the staff as to why we had been given 30-day visas but they let it go and stamped us in, so it might be worth double-checking your stamps to make sure they match up. Then we walked over the border - really easy twenty minutes or so, so don't worry about it or spend longer than you need in Kunming getting a visa.

Just over the border a jumbo nearly got away with charging me ten times as much as I'd budgetted to get to Udomxai, he wanted the princely sum of 350,000K! We settled for the steep price of 40,000K to charter him as far as Na Toei as we wanted to get moving, if you want to get to Udomxai you'd be best to sit yourself in the back of a jumbo to Luang Nam Tha and wait for it to fill up as the only road goes through Na Toei. Here we spent a happy couple of hours outside a restaurant adjusting to the speed of things in Laos and waiting for someone to come past. In the end we got in the back of a family car for 100,000K, again probably quite steep but no amount of gentle bargaining was bringing the price down.

Udomxai doesn't seem to have an international ATM, Luang Prabang has a couple though, so now we're here and not likely to starve. Overall the road trip cost well under half the cost of a flight to Vientiane, and even if it wasn't quite as comfortable it was a good way to leave China behind after nearly a year and move onto Laos.