The border crossing seems to go smoothly, thanks to a man who shows us around. At customs, we encounter a problem: apparently our motorbike was only allowed in Thailand for one month. We didn’t know this although it was clearly mentioned on the sheet that the Customs Office in Mae Sot had given us. A little silly, but we had never looked at this sheet before. Customs asks us a 240 euro fine. We want to try to reduce the fine and we go to their headquarters, back in Chiang Khong. They are friendly and after a few minutes they come up with a proposal to reduce the fine to half. They also tell us we should extend this, the next time we come to Thailand. Apparently, we can do this in any customs office in the country. We will remember this for Thailand Part 2.
We already did many border crossings, but this is the first time we have to pay for it. We have to pay immigration to stamp our passports and we also have to pay toll for the bridge. However, the worst is that two-wheelers are not allowed to cross the bridge without a police escort…10 euro please.

Welcome to Laos

More info on www.wijzijnweg.org