Dan's Adventure

Crossing a land border is never plain sailing, there is always something to complicate matters and make everything take longer. Leaving Cambodia and entering Laos was no exception.

The guesthouse I stayed at in Kratie offered a bus ticket all the way to Don Det in Laos for just $12, I expected to pay at least that from Stung Treng (the last town on the Cambodian side of the border) so I thought it was a great deal. I was to be picked up from the guesthouse, taken to the border, at the other side another bus would be waiting which would then take me to the boat to get over to Don Det, one of the four thousand islands. All good in theory.

As promised, a minivan (vehicle 1) collected myself and a Belgian guy from the guesthouse bang on time. The minivan was pretty comfortable, it was going to be part full so we all had enough space. It then turned the corner and stopped, surrounded by loads of other minivans. The driver got out, slid the door open and started to shout our destination of Stung Treng. We were in a share taxi. After around an hour of waiting the minivan was almost full, there were two spare seats and three Cambodian women had drawn the short straw of sharing their space with another foreigner’s bike. This evidently wasn’t good enough so we were asked to get out and were ushered to another vehicle.

A total of eight passengers were to make the 3 hour journey in a 5 seat car (vehicle 2). As the boot was loaded up and the bike tied onto the back the driver looked confused when he couldn’t get the lid to close. Money changed hands between the minivan driver and the car driver and finally we set off.

As we approached Stung Treng our driver started making some calls so as soon as we arrived another minivan (vehicle 3) was waiting for myself and the Belgian. After another exchange of money between the drivers, we were taken 5 minutes down the road to a restaurant where we were to wait half an hour on another share taxi (vehicle 4) to the border. The minivan arrived with only one spare seat, so the driver asked one of the Cambodians to get out as he had obviously been paid more to take us in the latest money exchange.

The officials at both the Cambodia and Laos immigration desks tried to get a couple extra of dollars out of us, but when we questioned it, they didn’t ask again and returned our passports.

Waiting on the Laos side of the border was a big air conditioned coach (vehicle 5), amazingly it was waiting just for the two of us. It was to take us to the boat operators. As we pulled off the main road and started making our way down a dirt track it was obvious that the coach wasn’t going to make it all the way, so it was no surprise when we had to change into yet another minivan (vehicle 6).

The minivan took us down the dirt road and onto the beach where we finally caught a long tail boat (vehicle 7) over to Don Det.

If I’ve learnt anything over the last 5 months is that theres no point worrying about things, you just need to go with the flow.