2 DAY slow boat into LAOS & 48 hours in Luang Prabang 🇱🇦

We wanted to show you our up-to-date Thailand to Laos border crossing experience, as we found there wasn't many recent articles online about this complicated process. For anyone who may do this journey in the near future, this was our notes of how the process played out:
THAILAND TO LAOS
- Woke up 5am in Chiang Rai
- Bus station (any terminal) by 6am, but realised first bus to Chiang Khong was 7:30am (and every hour following - should’ve been 2.5hr) - could've woken up later but didn't know
- Got taxi (in.drive) with 2 others, 250 baht each (1000 total) - 1.5hr drive direct to immigration office
- Pay for bus across friendship bridge, changed up THB for LAK at the desk - 20 baht per person plus 10 baht per bag for bus
- Cross friendship bridge, 5 mins
- Fill out VISA forms & hand in form and passport ASAP
- Wait for passport and VISA to come back to you
- Pay for VISA (680,000 LAK each ($40 USD) each)
- Pay for slow boat to Luang Prabang - 500,000 LAK each (can also get tuk tuk on your own to boat then pay there but not guaranteed seats). Can do it separately but we booked with a man after the VISA desk
- Taxi / tug-tuk takes you to boat
- Get on boat! (11:55 departure, meant to be 11:30)
- Bring game / book / word search to do as no powder sockets or signal for 6 hours
- Stop at Pak Being for the night. Can book cheap hotel there for one night
- Leave for Luang Prabang in morning. Ticket says 9:30am departure but get there early to get a seat!
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Calum & I are on our travels across Southeast Asia! We will try to vlog and upload regularly to show you the life of backpackers on the road, and all the world has to offer us whilst we are away travelling! We hope you can join us for this fun chapter, and any content or videos you wish for us to film please do let us know. Hope you enjoy!!!
Lucy xxxx
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[@sonevongkot6046]

Hope you enjoy in Laos, thanks for sharing the video. Bea slow life

[@sonevongkot6046]

Slow boat beautiful scenery..I want to go there someday

[@hfc6535]

Brilliant video really enjoyed it. I've been to laos . But not like that . Looked good fun. Just subscribed to your channel. Thanks

[@ogo4950]

Welcome to Laos 🇱🇦💗

[@iamkavie]

Hi, did you book the slow boat ticket at the Visa counter?

[@Laohaksad01]

welcome to lao

[@kelleymether9130]

Hi, I’m doing the slow boat to LP with my partner and daughter January next year - just wandering what your experience with tourist numbers trying to get on to the boats was like? Is there a chance of not being able to get on?

[@lsgmakeup]

Hellooo! We basically had read online that you’d need to get there early as possible to guarantee your space on the boat… according to an article which was about 10 years old! There was no up to date info about it! So we were up early and got there early and had no issues at all getting on, but we also know people that got up and got there for a normal time in the morning and they still got on the same boat as us, so honestly no I don’t think it would matter. A lot of Asian countries just want as much money as possible so unless it’s physically unsafe to get more people on the boat, they’ll squeeze as many people on as possible 😂 but that being said, definitely still try to be early because it makes it easier and you get to choose your seats if you’re early! Hope this helps? Xx

[@mcnoroi]

Hi, how you get the hotel at Pak Beng? Book early or walk in ?

[@lsgmakeup]

No we just paid when we arrived. When we got off the boat there was a lot of hotel owners ready to welcome guests without prior bookings. Only a very small % of the people on The boat had pre booked accommodation for that night!

[@crownb8546]

Hi ສະບາຍດີ welcome to Laos 🇱🇦

[@globaltreats]

Ahh, Sunrise. Served beer from a 7 year old girl :)

[@mills2285]

How did you get from Laos to Vietnam? Did you fly? Looking at flights and they’re like £150 😢

[@lsgmakeup]

We did! We were due to get the 24hr bus but because of Chinese New Year they cancelled it on those dates so we had to fly. It was about £120 each 😭 but had to get there as we put the date in on our evisa!