Early this month it was visa run time again. My passport has gotten pretty full after about 30 Chiang Mai - Mae Sai runs, and pretty much exhausted all the sites Northern Thailand had to offer. It was time to get the double entry tourist visa from Vientianne.

Apart from the market towns across the Burmese border, my missus has never been out of Thailand, and very keen to join me on a visa run. I figured we'd make a little holiday of it and go somewhere outside the capital for a few days. Where else than Vang Vieng?

The plan was to drive the gruelling journey from Chiang Mai to Udon Thani, drop the ute in for a service and make our way to the border. Too easy right? Go to Udon, find the Mazda dealer, drop the car off and get a taxi or bus to Nong Kai. Well without going into detail, the whole thing was a fuck around.

We left Chiang Mai at about 5 AM and planned to be in Laos late that arvo. One of the most stunning bits of scenery on the journey was leaving Chiang Mai driving into the sunrise below. The rest of the trip was a grind, nice scenery around Khao Yai area but didn't take many photos of the trip across Thailand.

Just want to mention again, I'm no star photographer, and a lot of the photos here are from a moving vehicle. Some of the best ones have my missus in it, and I can't let you stalking TD bastards get a glimpse, but will post some snaps around where we stayed and through Laos......

Chiang Mai sunrise.......



Due to Thais being so bad at giving / following simple directions and having no concept of time, we arrived at the border checkpoint at 7 PM. It started pissing down rain when a taxi hustler swooped on us. 600 THB to cross the border, with them helping out with the paperwork etc. and get us into Vientianne. Sold.