April 8th was Erlends 30th birthday, and a rather uneventful such in the normal birthday sense of the world. We had read that the Mengla-Boten border crossing closed at 17:00, hence it shouldn't be a problem to make it on time, but we wanted to get as much travelling done as possible early in the day. We had excellent breakfast baozi with the locals in the market behind the hotel, and spent some time strolling around the spice stalls before we checked out.We were not completely clear on how far we would have to venture to reach the bus station where we could get a connection to the border, but locals we met in the streets were rather acommodating when we showed them the guide books. The southern bus station is about half a kilometre away from the northern one, on the same side of the street. Ask someone, because it's a bit hidden away.
Getting a ticket for the border was no problem, and it was very cheap. We shared a mini bus with a bunch of young military men carrying a variety of packed goods you wouldn't believe. Due to the heavy rains the evening before, road conditions were poor to say the least. Asphalt was nowhere in sight, and the mud was deep and slippery. Along the way we caught glimpses of, and even got to drive on, parts of the new highway they're working on that will connect Southern China with the southern neighbouring countries.
The mud soon brought us more trouble than we cared for. As Erlend is a rather laid back character who lives in China and therefore thinks he's intitled to total relaxation when he goes on holiday, he chose not to exit the vehicle when we got stuck in the mud. I got out to help the Chinese soldiers push, but I don't know if it helped much. It took us quite a while to get loose, all the while Erlend was sitting in the bus being a turist :D He didn't even take any pictures of my heroic efforts!
The border crossing was not exactly the most interesting place ever. We got our papers right on the Chinese side (took 5 minutes), dumped some oranges we had carried along for the bus ride but knew we would never eat, and decided to walk on through to the Laos side instead of taking a tuk-tuk. You can easily skip this and save yourself twenty minutes of walking, however it was rather nice to see and hear the tropic environment without the roar of engines. It was also around this time we realized our cell phones were not responding the way they should, and the thought that maybe Laos was one of those countries you've heard of but never been to without any mobile network started introducing itself to our stressed out business senses.
We had read the visa was supposed to cost 25 dollars, but apparently the prices had gone up a bit. The list of visa prices was really entertaining! Remember that Laos is a "people's republic", and not very democratically inclined. It was a bit funny to see the countries lined up like this... in how many countries would North Koreans have an easier time getting a visa than Norwegians, and since when is everything cheaper if you're Swedish?Getting the visa took us approximately half an hour. You need to have a couple of passport photos with you for the application, but all documents are provided at the crossing. The staff speak english, and compared to getting into China this was easy. Note that it is somewhat unorganized, so if someone steps in front of you in the queues you just push them aside and all will be well.
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