I left at eight after oversleeping 🙈 I’d been too nervous to sleep the night before. I followed the highway towards Hòa Bình, then rode up through Mộc Châu in Sơn La and reached the Lóng Sập border crossing around half past twelve.

420 kilometres on my first day in Laos — photo 1
My tyre went flat on the way to the border. Luckily I only had to push the motorbike a short way to a repair shop. It was quiet out there, with hardly any houses. Thinking back, I wonder if the repair shop had put those nails on the road :)))
420 kilometres on my first day in Laos — photo 2
I rode on to the Pa Hang crossing on the Lao side. I couldn’t see anyone and went around calling for someone :))) When I said I was riding to the capital, Vientiane, the man doing the bike paperwork started giving me a hard time. I didn’t pay extra. I told him I was a student and didn’t have much money and asked him to help me out. Luckily he let me through. I only found out later that to ride around the country I should have crossed at Điện Biên. The paperwork here was only for one Lao province. 
420 kilometres on my first day in Laos — photo 3
Once I was through, I bought two Unitel SIM cards from a grocery shop on the other side. They were 10,000 or 20,000 kip, I think, and I only used one. I didn’t have eSIMs back then. If the shop hadn’t sold SIMs or accepted Vietnamese money, I’d probably have turned around 🙏
420 kilometres on my first day in Laos — photo 4

I used Google Translate to ask in Lao where I could change money. The young man was kind enough to get on his motorbike and lead me to a restaurant run by a Vietnamese couple. I exchanged 3 million đồng for about 1.1 million Lao kip.

Next I filled up the bike. It was 10,000 kip, but I handed the woman a 100,000 note. She showed me the difference and took the 10,000 note instead.

Sam Nuea reminded me of a province in northern Vietnam. At a fork by the airport I stopped to check my map, and a young man told me to turn back. I wasn’t worried yet. I thought he was sending me back to find a room because it was getting dark. The same guy came back in a police uniform 🙂 He took my passport and I had to follow him to the station. I used Google Translate for the same line about being a student. He read it and pursed his lips :))) He seemed serious and put my passport away in a drawer. In the end I paid 50,000 kip, around 150,000 đồng then, to get the paperwork for my bike.

A little further on, at a red light, another officer came over to ask questions. I had the paperwork by then, so it was fine.

At the foot of the mountain, another policeman came after me and said a few words in Vietnamese. I wasn’t afraid by then and kept riding 🙊

420 kilometres on my first day in Laos — photo 5
I rode until ten at night. By then it was too dangerous to carry on. The roads were mountainous, the storms had brought landslides and I was worried about getting robbed too. Whenever I saw a car, I followed it. I was lucky to stop somewhere that rented rooms. Where else was I going to find one out in the woods? 🥹
420 kilometres on my first day in Laos — photo 6

The owner was friendly and funny, though I couldn’t understand what she said. When she held up five fingers I knew it was only 50,000 kip for the night 🙂 There was no drinking water and no water for a shower. Luckily I still had a carton of Milo, so I drank it and went straight to sleep.

I’d covered 420 kilometres in fourteen hours on that first day, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

From the trip Laos. Read the Vietnamese original on Blogger