Crossing From Laos to Thailand

The sun hung blood red in the morning haze over Vang Vieng. It's burning season, the air is thick with burnt rice fields. Though the early morning air held a chill, the heat in my windowless closet of a room afforded me no sleep the night before.

Groggy, tired and feeling ill, I said goodbye to my friends Ana, Peter and Vet, and we piled into another grey van. I can't count the number of grey vans I've sat in since arriving in SE Asia this trip. The road to Udon Thani is pure hell. Walter described it as being in a washing machine. 170 kms takes 4 hours. An entire morning being bumped, jostled  and thrown around a grey van. Its the first time I've felt car sick in decades.

We stopped for brunch at the Full Moon Cafe in Vientiane (the word moon appears in every second eating or drinking establishment in Laos it seems), a cool little spot that offers the service of uploading music to your iPod while you eat for a small fee. While pouring through the list of music our DP informed me that he was bringing some weed across the border with him. You can buy the stuff anywhere in SE Asia, but not as easily as in Vang Vieng, where we had left. Still, it seemed silly to me. The penalties are severe for that kind of thing in this part of the world.

After the best burger I'd had in ages, we loaded up the grey van. Our first stop was to drop Walter off at his hotel. He was heading straight to BKK to pick up his gear. His daughter had already headed that way earlier in the week. I'm gonna miss that guy, forever blowing himself up.

A couple hours later we hit the border. Our driver grabbed our passports and hopped out of the van. Our DP and Wrangler decided to go duty free shopping. The poisoned mayo, so common in Laos, loaded onto my burger was haunting me so I ducked out to find a bathroom. After I searched a while I walked past the van when our sound guy yelled through the window that we were done. The driver took care of everything, we were good to go. Less than 10 minutes for all 5 of us. Brilliant. I called the rest of the crew and we were leaving Laos and entering Thialand. We crossed the Friendship Bridge and waited to get into Laos as our driver took care of business again. Love that guy!!

I neglected to take a pic of the one at Udon Thani, here's
its counterpart in Ko Chang.

While waiting I noticed a sign that had writing in both Thai and Laos, with quite a bit of info. At the bottom, in English it simply read "Severely Punished". On the left was a skull and crossbones superimposed over a collage of pills, white powder and a bong.
"I guess the punishment of E, Coke or Weed is death." is said. No one seemed phased by that, especially our DP.

Five minutes later we were back in Thailand. One more shoot day at a dam outside Chiang Mai, then 2 days in Bangkok and I'm out of here. Snow and hockey, here I come!