Our last memories of Laos are yet another bumpy, winding bus ride and we were forced to listen to terrible Laos pop for nearly the whole way. There was a speaker behind our heads and the Chinese guy next to us yanked out the wires to save all our eardrums. Unfortunately, the conductor came to fix it soon after.
All the bags were loaded on the roof so when someone got off the conductor had to climb onto the roof to get their bags. The driver didn't wait for him to get down and started off agin with him on the roof! So he'd sing down through an open window and back into the bus as we careened around the corners and bumped our way to the border. Only we seemed to be amazed by this, the locals just seemed to ignore it and apparently thought it was fairly normal.
We then had to take a boat across the river border, a tuk tuk to the station and another 4 hour bus ride (this time without the plop music). We were dismayed to discover that we were only issued with a 15 day visa exemption instead of the usual 30. The reason: the Thai government changed its policy with 'immediate effect' and without warning for people arriving over land (airport arrivals still get 30 days) to cut down on the people doing a 'border run' every 30 days to stay in the country. This scuppered our plans enormously since we had reckoned on spending all our remaining time in Thailand.
We were impressed by all the Christmas decorations and music that were on display in Chiang Rai and Karen enjoyed the night market while Ross watched Star Movies in the hotel room because he hates shopping loads and loads.
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